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Along came a huge brown bear. 


Page 32 




















SITKA 

THE SNOW BABY 

By Allen Chaffee 

Author of ‘'Unexplored”, “Lost River” 

The “Twinkly Eyes Books” “Fuzzy Wuzz” Etc. 


Illustrated by 
PETER DA RU 

> ) 

> » > 


MILTON BRADLEY COMPANY 

Springfield, Massachusetts 





w 



Copyright, 1923 

By MILTON BRADLEY COMPANY 
Springfield, Massachusetts 


All Rights Reserved 



Bradley Quality Boohs 


Printed in United States of America 


HAY 14 *23 



C1A705709 


’si Cj j 




To 


/ 

Peter DaRu 


who knows and loves the Alaskan wilderness 








FOREWORD 


H ERE, in story form, is the natural his¬ 
tory of Alaska, our last great Ameri¬ 
can wilderness. 

In the adventures of the wee white polar 
bear, who drifts down the coast on a float¬ 
ing berg, the young reader has a chance to 
see Southern Alaska, with its two months 
of lush summer verdure, as well as the long 
frozen winter under the Northern lights, 
and the later summers far out in Bering 
Strait. 

With the enterprising bear cub, he can 
watch Eskimos and reindeer, seals and wal¬ 
ruses, migratory sea birds and the salmon 
who swim the inland waterways to spawn. 
He will witness the birth of an ice-berg and 
adventure amid the storms and glaciers of 
the polar night. 

There is also the story of a seal baby, who 
became the pet of the fisherman’s little boy. 



CONTENTS 


SITKA, THE SNOW BABY 


Chapter 

I. 

The Little White Bear 


Page 

1 

II. 

Unga, the Eskimo Boy 


8 

III. 

Adrift on an Ice-Berg . 


15 

IV. 

The Walrus Herd 


22 

V. 

Summer in Alaska 


29 

VI. 

Blueberries and Mosquitoes 


34 

VII. 

An Adventure 


41 

VIII. 

Wolves and Salmon 


47 

IX. 

The Birth of an Ice-Berg . 


56 

X. 

Monsters of the Sea . 


62 

XI. 

Tooth and Fang . 


68 

XII. 

“Let There Be Peace’’ 


81 


FINNY-FOOT, THE SEAL 


I. 

The Water Puppy 

• 

88 

II. 

Pietro’s Pet . 

• 

95 

III. 

The Trained Seals 

• 

. 101 

IV. 

Flapper the Fur Seal . 

• 

. 108 

Glossary of Alaskan Words . 

• 

. 116 






✓ 



CHAPTER I 


THE LITTLE WHITE BEAR 

S ITKA, the Snow Baby, opened his eyes 
on a world all blue-white ice-bergs and 
green-blue ocean under a sky that sparkled 
in the spring sunshine. 

He was as fat as butter and as fuzzy as 
a kitten, was Sitka, the little white bear. 
He looked for all the world like a big puppy, 
with his long white fur that was to keep 
him warm in this land of ice and snow. For 
his home was Alaska, that great Western 
frontier of the United States that reaches 
to the North Pole. 

Why was Sitka white,, instead of black 
like his cousin Twinkly Eyes, of the deep, 
black-shadowed pine woods? One reason 
for his having white fur in that land of 

white was so that his enemies could not see 

1 


I 


2 SITKA, THE SNOW BABY 

him so plainly. For there were fierce white 
wolves that would have eaten him, had they 
found him, he was so little and soft and 
helpless. Of course his mother could pro¬ 
tect him,—if there weren’t too many wolves, 
she was so big and fierce. Mother White 
Bear, like all the polar bear tribe, was at 
least twice as big as Mother Black Bear. 

Sitka had been born five weeks before in 
the cave in the ice-berg where his mother 
had slept the winter away. At first he had 
been naked and blind and helpless. Now his 
fur had grown and his eyes had opened, and 
he was ready to take a look at the world. 

My, how cold it was, even in spring, here 
in Alaska! His mother kept walking back 
and forth, back and forth, on the ice, be¬ 
cause the minute she stopped her feet would 
have frozen fast, even though their soles 
were covered with fur. Sitka watched her 
for a few minutes, then he, too, began pac¬ 
ing back and forth, back and forth, without 
stopping. 

His mother had a longer neck than most 
bears, because it helped her to keep her nose 


THE LITTLE WHITE BEAR 3 

above water when she swam. She was a 
great swimmer, for she lived on fish most 
of the time, and in her search for salmon 
and mackerel and shell-fish she often went 
far from shore, swimming from one ice¬ 
floe to the next through the open sea. The 
polar bear is often called the sea bear. 

Now this is what had become of Sitka's 
father.—When the long, dark polar winter 
had set in and Sitka's mother had curled 
herself up in the ice cave to hibernate, her 
mate had gone roaming over land and sea 
in search of good things to eat. He never 
slept the winter away as she did, and the 
cold gave him a ravenous appetite. Some¬ 
thing must have happened to him during 
his wanderings, for he never came back. 
Perhaps an Eskimo killed him, to make his 
warm white fur into a rug for his igloo, as 
they call the little round snow houses these 
little brown people live in. Or perhaps he 
wanted a bear skin to make himself a parka, 
the hooded shirt they wear. 

Sitka's mother had selected for her win¬ 
ter sleep a den on the ice-berg. This was 


4 


SITKA, THE SNOW BABY 


when the sea froze over. When the spring 
sunshine began shining through the glassy 
walls of her retreat, and Sitka was strong 
enough to follow her, she burst her way 
through the icy door of her cave and led 
him forth, while she looked this way and 
that for something she could eat. The berg 
had broken away from the harbor ice, and 
floated this way and that through the open 
sea, as the wind blew it along. There wasn’t 
a thing she could eat on that ice cake, and 
she was starved after her winter’s fast. 

Most of the year she had to live on fish 
and clams, and the eggs of sea birds, be¬ 
cause only in mid-summer were there ber¬ 
ries and grasses. She loved salmon perhaps 
best of all. Once she found a good fishing 
ground, she could catch the great silver fish 
with her claws. But not one fish could she 
see in the water that broke in little waves 
against their floating island. 

Small sea-gulls were flying low above 
their heads. They were Arctic tern, and 
it made her mouth water to look at them. 
Leaping after one that flew low overhead, 


THE LITTLE WHITE BEAR 5 

she made a grab at it with her paw, but 
failed to catch it. Wee Sitka also made a 
grab at them, but his fat legs slipped from 
under him, and over and over he rolled like 
a furry ball. The birds had been wintering 
in the South, and they had flown thousands 
of miles on their long wings to get back 
to Alaska. By and by, when the short Arctic 
summer came, it would be the most wonder¬ 
ful place in the world to raise their families 
and find the things they liked to eat. They 
had webbed feet, so that they could swim 
when their wings got tired, and their long 
bills were hooked at the tips to help them 
catch their slippery prey. 

Just now the circling birds wheeled at 
the call of their leader and went flapping 
Eastward toward the Alaskan shore. “That 
means they’ve seen something good,—per¬ 
haps a school of mackerel,” Sitka’s mother 
rumbled deep down in her throat. No won¬ 
der the Eskimos watch the tern for a sign 
of good luck, for the bright eyes of a flock 
of gulls are sure to see where the best fish¬ 
ing ground lies. 


6 SITKA, THE SNOW BABY 

Mother White Bear plunged into the icy 
water, bidding the snow baby follow her. 
Sitka dipped one fat paw into the icy tide, 
and squealed that he was afraid. “Come 
on,” she urged him. “Just catch hold of 
my tail and I’ll tow you along.” (For you 
know the polar bear has a wee stub of a 
tail.) 

“No-o-o-o!” he squealed, afraid. But wise 
Mother White Bear sank almost out of 
sight in the blue-green water. “Wa-i-t!” 
he wailed. 

Of a sudden she lifted her head high on 
its long neck, and sniffed the current of the 
wind. Sitka also sniffed, to find out what 
it was she smelled. Just then his feet slipped 
from under him, and off into the icy water 
slid the fat white cub. “Oosh! Huff—huff 
—huff!” he gasped, the plunge fairly tak¬ 
ing his breath away. He felt sure that he 
was going under. Without once realizing 
that he was learning to swim, he struck out 
with all fours, just as if he were running, 
till he could make a grab for his mother’s 
tail. Then he clung to it with his teeth, 


THE LITTLE WHITE BEAR 7 

while she swam strongly to the next great, 
floating ice cake. There she scrambled over 
the edge, and Sitka with her, and stood 
shaking her wet fur and sniffing the wind. 

“I smell birds’ nests,” she explained. “But 
I get a message about something else, too. 
It must be an enemy;” for the fur was ris¬ 
ing along the back of her neck, the way it 
does when danger threatens. 


CHAPTER II 

THE ESKIMO BOY 

T HE little white bear wondered why his 
mother wriggled her nose, with the 
fur rising so angrily on the back of her 
neck. 

It was only a boy,—Unga, an Eskimo lad, 

who, unlike Sitka, walked on his hind legs 

all the time. But Mother White Bear had 

been hunted so many times by these small 

brown people that her first instinct was to 

dive beneath the icy water and swim to 

safety. But with the wee, fat cub it would 

be hard to dive without drowning him. Of 

course, had she been alone, she could have 

handled the little Eskimo with one blow of 

her huge fore arm. But she knew he could 

throw a spear that might hurt Sitka. Then 

8 


THE ESKIMO BOY 


9 


he would take the cub’s soft fur to make a 
fur coat. That had happened, once, to a 
polar cub. The thought made her growl 
ferociously, deep down in her throat. 

A moment more and the fur-clad little 
fellow came in sight. Fortunately for Sitka, 
he was alone. He had not brought one of 
the great, wolfish “husky” dogs that bears 
are so afraid of. His father was driving 
the dog-team to his sled that day. 

Sitka’s mother turned. The odor of the 
birds’ nests was very near now. Following 
that wonderful nose of hers straight across 
the ice, she swam another bit of open water, 
hoping to leave the boy behind her. Again 
she crossed an ice-floe, Sitka close behind, 
and again she swam an open lane of water. 
That way, they came to a rocky islet that 
was covered thick with eider ducks. The 
great, handsome birds had plucked the soft 
feathers,—the eider down,—from their own 
breasts to line their rocky nests, and in 
these nests were hundreds and thousands 
of pale eggs. The whole rocky islet was 
covered with these nests. 


10 SITKA, THE SNOW BABY 

“Um!” sniffed Mother White Bear hun¬ 
grily. “I think we have left that boy be¬ 
hind, and I am going to have eggs for sup¬ 
per.” With Sitka close at her heels, she 
shuffled along between the nests, taking 
here an egg and there an egg and crunching 
it in her great jaws. The meal put new 
strength into her; it would enable her to 
nurse her furry baby when she put him to 
sleep. 

The ducks quacked and scolded, but there 
were so many eggs that there would be 
plenty left to hatch into ducklings. 

So busy had Mother White Bear been at 
her feast that she had almost forgotten 
about the Eskimo boy. Of a sudden she saw 
him paddling around the islet in his seal¬ 
skin boat. At the same instant he saw wee, 
fuzzy Sitka galloping along behind his 
mother, trying his best to keep up with her. 
The boy raised his spear to hurl it at the 
Snow Baby. 

At that moment Sitka’s life was certainly 
in danger. But great, nine foot Mother 
White Bear, catching a whiff of the wind 


I 


THE ESKIMO BOY ii 

that blew straight to her wonderful nose 
from the dirty, greasy Eskimo lad, turned 
back just in time. Furiously she batted the 
spear with her powerful forearm as it came 
whistling through the air. In another in¬ 
stant it would have struck her baby. Growl¬ 
ing awful threats, she rushed at Unga to 
drive him back. 

The little white bear, terrified by the bat¬ 
tle that seemed about to be fought over his 
small person, turned tail and ran for all he 
was worth. From a point that jutted from 
the rocky islet he scrambled aboard a blue- 
white chunk of ice. The next thing he knew, 
the ice cracked with a sound like the roar of 
a cannon, and the floe he was on split off 
and began floating away. Sitka whimpered 
in fright as he watched the blue-green 
water rush in between him and the isle. 

But his mother saw him and came racing 
across the rocks, stepping, smash! all over 
the birds’ nests in her hurry. Swimming 
the strip of open water, she scrambled up 
beside him, and began nuzzling him all over 
to see if he was hurt. The Eskimo boy 


12 SITKA, THE SNOW BABY 

would trouble them no more. They could 
see him paddling away in his skin canoe. 

Sitka was to have an even more exciting 
time later that spring. Awaking in his 
mother’s warm, furry arms to a morning of 
golden sunshine and blue sky, with gulls 
flying overhead crying “que-ok, que-ok, 
que-ok!” and the ice-bergs that rose like 
blue-white mountain peaks to seaward, he 
was startled by a rumbling like thunder. 
All about them it began sounding, for the 
ice cakes were breaking apart, floating this 
way and that and grinding against one 
another. But their own berg, so snug and 
safe with its cave in which they always 
slept, towered among the up-ending ice 
cakes as secure as a miniature mountain 
peak. 

Away off in the open water they could 
see little spouts of water. Sitka’s mother 
said it was whales “blowing.” 

“What are whales?” the cub demanded, 
round eyed with wonder. 

“Whales,” said his mother, “are great 
fish-like creatures, ever and ever and ever 


THE ESKIMO BOY 


13 


so much bigger than the biggest polar bear 
that ever lived. But the queer thing is that 
they are not fish, really, though they spend 
their lives in the ocean, because they have 
fur instead of scales, and the mother whale 
nurses her baby just as a cat does her 
kitten.” 

“Oo! Aren’t you afraid of whales?” 
Sitka marvelled. 

“No. They have the tiniest mouths. But 
whale meat is delicious. These little brown 
men hunt them for their blubber, as they 
call the fat that lines their sides, and I’d 
love nothing better than to find a strip of 
blubber. Let’s go a little nearer.—Um! I 
smell blubber now. I do believe those Es¬ 
kimos have been whale-hunting. If we could 
just find where they’ve been cutting blub¬ 
ber, what a feast it would be!” 

The Snow Baby was happy to go explor¬ 
ing. Climbing a steep, icy slope to the ridge 
of the next ice pan, they could see, away 
across the ice, which had frozen in ridges 
like the waves of the sea, a huge dark body 
that Mother White Bear’s nose said was a 


14 


SITKA, THE SNOW BABY 


whale. But further out, a horde of the fur- 
clad little brown men were racing toward 
another whale in their seal-skin boats, with 
spears raised. Mother White Bear hesi¬ 
tated. She hated to take Sitka too near 
these Eskimos. But the odor of whale meat 
came tantalizingly to her nostrils, and she 
was dreadfully hungry. Cautiously she 
padded forward, and Sitka after her, ready 
at a moment’s notice to run for their lives. 
But they reached the meat in safety. 

She had just begun to eat ravenously 
when a sudden shout went up. One of the 
little brown men had seen her, and turned 
in pursuit. 


CHAPTER III 


ADRIFT ON AN ICE-BERG 

N O sooner had Mother White Bear seen 
the Eskimo turn to pursue her than she 
started running back over the ice floe, urg¬ 
ing the fat cub to follow. 

Sitka raced as best he could, but his fat 
forelegs were so much shorter than his hind 
legs that he stepped on his own feet and 
fell, and rolled this way and that. Again 
and again he fell, till Mother White Bear 
came back and tried to carry him by the 
scruff of the neck. But he was too heavy 
for that now. And all the time the little 
brown man was coming closer. At last the 
Eskimo raised his spear to hurl it at 
Sitka. 

Mother White Bear had just come to the 
top of a steep, slippery place on the ice-floe 


16 


SITKA, THE SNOW BABY 


where it sloped to the sea.* In desperation, 
the great, furry mother took wee Sitka in 
her almost human forearms, and sitting 
down at the top of the slide, coasted straight 
down the ice-pan into the white-capped 
waves. By the time the Eskimo had climbed 
to the top of the slide, where he could see 
what had become of them, they were swim¬ 
ming rapidly away, the cub holding fast to 
his mother’s tail. 

Even then the little brown man could 
have thrown his spear and struck them, but 
Mother White Bear, suspicioning as much, 
made a dive under a floating cake of ice. 
They came up on the other side, where he 
could not see them, their noses just barely 
out of water,—and there they waited till 
long after the little brown man had given 


♦Note—A polar bear seen on the broken ice off 
Wrangel Island was seen to climb to the top of an uptilted 
ice-pan, lay down on his side, and pushing himself off with 
one hind foot, coast down head foremost to the water 
thirty of forty feet below, states E. W. Nelson in a pub¬ 
lication of the National Geographic Society. 

Another time he saw a mother bear shelter her cub 
from flying bullets by taking him between her fore legs 
and swimming away with him, 



ADRIFT ON AN ICE-BERG 17 

up and gone back to the whale hunt. 

There followed delightful days on Egg 
Island, as they called the rocks on which 
they had found the eider ducks. It rained 
a good deal, but they did not mind. The 
days were getting longer now. There were 
only a few hours of darkness between sun¬ 
set and sunrise. The ice of inland rivers 
was thawed through in spots, where the 
Eskimos had chopped holes to catch salmon. 
Mother White Bear would sit all day at one 
of these salmon holes, watching for the big 
red fish. When she saw one, biff! would go 
her fore arm, claws out like five ivory fish 
hooks, to nab the slippery fellow. Then 
how she did feast! Sitka watched every 
move she made, because by and by he, too, 
wanted to be a mighty fisherman. 

One day she took him to visit Seal Rocks. 
From far away they could hear the dog-like 
barking of the queer creatures, as they lay 
basking in the noonday sun. Now and again 
one would come swimming along with a fish 
in his jaws, clambering up on the rocks with 
his flippers. 


18 SITKA, THE SNOW BABY 

Long ago, when the world was young, 
Mother White Bear told Sitka, the seals 
all lived on land, and had legs, but they 
found it so much easier to get their food 
from the sea that they became expert swim¬ 
mers. That meant that Mother Nature had 
to flatten their fore-legs into flippers, with 
webbed fingers, so that they could use them 
as paddles, as a fish does his fins. Their 
hind legs she turned into flappers that they 
could hold snug together and use, like a 
fish’s tail, to steer with. This makes it hard 
for them to get about on land, and Sitka 
thought it was the funniest sight in the 
world to see them humping themselves 
along over the rocks. But they were won¬ 
derful at swimming and diving and catch¬ 
ing fish. 

Mother White Bear would not swim too 
near Seal Rocks today, however, because 
the great bull seals, the fathers and grand¬ 
fathers, were there to protect the little ones. 
And my, how those old bulls did bark at 
them! For they feared that Mother White 
Bear might like the flavor of baby seal. 


ADRIFT ON AN ICE-BERG 19 

Nearly every cow-seal had a baby with soft, 
woolly white fur, though when it grew up 
it would be brown and tan. Mother White 
Bear would have liked to take Sitka a little 
nearer, but though the cow seals were not 
much bigger than big dogs, the bulls were 
almost as huge as herself. That, she told 
the inquiring cub, was because every bull 
had to protect at least a dozen cows and 
their babies. The young bulls are killed for 
their skins, and that makes the numbers 
uneven. 

The seals had all been South for the win- 
ter. In May the bull seals had returned to 
the islands, swimming through the icy 
water so fast that the cows could not keep 
up with them. For several weeks the hulls 
had held contests, and fought among them¬ 
selves to see who was strongest, and who 
should have the best home sites on the 
islands. In June their mates had come, 
and almost the same day, the seal pups had 
been born. It is still cold in Alaska in early 
summer, but the seals have such thick fur 
—these Alaska seals—that they do not mind. 


20 SITKA, THE SNOW BABY 

Of course the best deep sea fishing cannot 
be found so near shore, and the mother 
seals often had to swim for miles to find 
food. Then they would come back and nurse 
their babies. By fall the little ones would 
be able to fish for themselves, and they 
would all go South for the winter. 

The two bears next swam past some rocks 
where they saw a herd of huge fat walruses. 
These leather-skinned old fellows, who 
looked as if they might be second cousins to 
the seals, had great tusks that curved from 
their jaws to the very ground. Sitka was 
terribly afraid when he saw those ivory 
tusks. But his mother only laughed and 
bade him watch and see what they did with 
their ferocious-looking weapons. Then she 
led him over the rocks, past the lazy, lub¬ 
berly creatures, who eyed them stupidly, to 
where one old fellow was busy just off 
shore. To Sitka’s immense surprise, the 
monster was digging clams with his tusks. 
He had quite a pile of them waiting for his 
supper. 

Sitka watched with twinkling eyes till 


ADRIFT ON AN ICE-BERG 21 

the old fellow’s back was turned. Then he 
made a dash to see what those clams were 
like. My, how that walrus roared at him! 
He made for him with his tusks, but Sitka 
dodged to one side too quickly for his 
clumsy lunge. 


CHAPTER IV 


THE WALRUS HERD 

O N a bare, flat island of the ice pack 
sprawled a herd of walruses. Sitka 
stared! 

They were the fattest, ugliest, fiercest 
looking monsters the little white bear had 
ever seen. They were not as fierce as they 
looked, however, as Mother White Bear 
knew, for they lived on clams and shell-fish. 
Their fierce appearance came partly from 
the long ivory tusks with which they dug 
their clams. 

They were enormous creatures, some of 
the old bulls weighing fully two thousand 
pounds. Like seals, their legs consisted of 
flappers. But there the resemblance ended. 

Instead of silky fur, they had ugly, hairless, 

22 


THE WALKUS HERD 


23 


warty-looking hides, tough and wrinkled 
and of a muddy brown. 

Neither have they the brains of the seal 
tribe: for they had found the life of the 
clam digger so easy that they had no need 
of brains, and Nature takes back what we 
do not use. Their thick necks ended in heads 
so shallow that there seemed to be nothing 
there but a pair of tiny eyes and the whis¬ 
kers at the roots of their tusks. 

On land these ungainly monsters were 
almost helpless in their fatness,—instead of 
being agile like seals. But in the sea they 
were marvelous swimmers, their layers of 
fat blubber helping there to float them. 

However, like all mammals, they will 
fight fiercely when their babies are in 
danger. 

As Sitka and his mother approached the 
ice where lay a herd of mother walruses 
and their young, the mothers eyed them an¬ 
grily, and the moment they scrambled 
aboard the floe, several of them charged 
with the utmost ferocity, bellowing and 
rearing themselves high on their hind quar- 


24 SITKA, THE SNOW BABY 

ters as if to fling themselves on the intru¬ 
ders and crush them flat, as, indeed, they 
might have done, had not Mother White 
Bear given Sitka the signal to dive off into 
the water again. Dearly would she have 
loved to treat him to walrus calf, but it was 
plain they would have to try strategy in 
capturing such prey. 

For a time they swam around, not too 
close to the mother walruses. The fathers 
were digging clams, heaping great piles of 
them on shore, then settling to their feast, 
or sometimes eating as they dug. Sitka 
eyed these clam piles with envy and a little 
mischief. “Mother, Fm going to try it 
again!” he announced. And before she 
could utter a warning, he had made a dash 
for the breakfast a huge old bull was look¬ 
ing forward to, as he dug away in the shal¬ 
low water. 

With a bellow of wrath the old fellow 
reared his monstrous head and eyed the 
white cub with a gleam of anger. “Come 
back!” whoofed Mother White Bear. But 
Sitka did not hear. The next moment the 


THE WALRUS HERD 


25 


ivory tusks would have come down straight 
into the middle of Sitka's back, but that he 
dodged, and slid into the water with no 
more than a red gash on his white side. 

“Just wait till I'm a little bigger!" he 
roared at the walrus. “You just wait!" 

It was therefore with huge interest that 
he watched his mother, towards dusk that 
afternoon, prepare to creep up on a walrus 
calf. Bidding Sitka remain in hiding behind 
a chunk of ice, she flattened herself like a 
cat creeping up on a bird, and waited till 
it should be wholly dark. She had fixed on 
a calf who, with his mother, lay a little to 
one side of the main body of the herd, and 
in order to take them by surprise, she and 
Sitka had made their approach by swim¬ 
ming first out to sea, then doubling back 
and approaching with nothing showing 
above water-line save the black tips of their 
noses. 

In that interval just between sundown 
and the first stars, when it was darkest, she 
began creeping slowly forward. Once her 
foot scraped the ice, and the walrus cow 


i 


26 SITKA, THE SNOW BABY 

looked up suspiciously, and Mother White 
Bear held as still as a rock till the cow had 
gone to sleep again. Then forward she 
crept, nearer, nearer, nearer, nearer! Sit¬ 
ka could no longer see her white bulk for 
the darkness, nor could he hear aught but 
the wind and the waves. 

With a sudden dash she had broken the 
calf’s neck with a blow and was dragging 
his huge weight back over the ice. The 
walrus cow was roused now and rearing 
this way and that, trying to overtake them. 
But so awkward are walruses on land that 
she could make no headway compared with 
agile Mother White Bear; and though her 
bellowing awoke the herd and they raised 
the most terrific alarm, they were still far¬ 
ther away than she. In the inky darkness 
they only tumbled over one another in their 
awkwardness, searching in vain for the 
cause of the disturbance. Had Mother 
White Bear met them in the water, it would 
have been a different story. But she did 
not take to the water till she had reached 
the place where she had left Sitka. Then, 


THE WALRUS HERD 


27 


softly, softly, they slipped over the edge of 
the ice and began towing the fat body of 
the calf to shore. It meant feasting for 
many days. 


It was only a week later that they 
watched, themselves safely hidden, their 
black noses just barely out of water, while 
a band of Eskimos went walrus hunting, 
and Sitka marveled to see what cowards 
walruses could be. As the little brown men 
approached in their kyacks (fearless in 
these frail skin boats), the whole herd 
simply rushed terrified into the water and 
swam for their lives. Even then it was 
simple enough for the hunters to make a 
kill with their bone-pointed spears. Had 
the walruses not been such cowards, it 
would have been the easiest thing in the 
world for them to have reared their tusked 
heads out of the water and crushed the 
boats. 



CHAPTER V 


SUMMER IN ALASKA 

T HE ice-berg on which Sitka and his 
mother had their den was drifting fur¬ 
ther and further South. 

It was but one of many bergs, and a small 
one, at that. Huge, mountainous looking 
islets of the blue-white ice swam all about 
them, sometimes bumping against one 
another with a roar. Sea birds screamed 
above their heads, and the sun glinted from 
the water merrily, on days when it did not 
rain. Sitka felt that they were bound on 
a great adventure. 

Sometimes the wee white bear watched 

the waves that broke in white foam against 

the floating bergs, and nowhere could he 

see anything but sea and sky. Again they 

floated close to shore, where steep granite 

28 


SUMMEK IN ALASKA 


29 


cliffs jutted in long arms between the fiords, 
—the narrow inlets the ice had cut. In 
places, the cliffs were red with the cooled 
lava that had come pouring hot from some 
ancient volcano; and Mother White Bear 
would tell Sitka how, when the world was 
young, the mountain peaks that lined the 
shore had flamed and smoked and rumbled, 
and sent forth a fountain of fire and ashes. 
For that was the way new mountains were 
made. At such times Sitka’s eyes would 
grow round with wonder. 

“Will it happen again?” he asked un¬ 
easily. 

“Sometimes it happens even now,” his 
mother told him. “But it is nothing to be 
afraid of. We won’t go near.” 

“But where does the fire come from?” 
he would ask. 

“From away inside the earth. You know 
it was once all hot millions of years ago, 
but it has cooled until we have ice and 
snow.” 

Their little berg soon began floating down 
a shore covered by green forest, which 


30 SITKA, THE SNOW BABY 

crept to the very water’s edge. Birds sang 
in the tree tops, and lovely waterfalls 
poured over the pink limestone cliffs. It 
was like paradise. Tall ferns and brilliant 
flowers embroidered the brook banks. 
Mother White Bear sniffed. She could 
smell ripening berries. It would be worth 
while to swim ashore and have a little 
change from fish. Sitka was the happiest 
little bear in all Alaska. 

That day they feasted on clams and mus¬ 
sels and other shell-fish that they found 
among the rocks. They had juicy meadow 
grasses, too, and lilies with roots like on¬ 
ions. The days were growing longer and 
longer, till there were just a few hours of 
darkness, and all the rest was day. For 
it was the land of the midnight sun. “In 
winter Sitka’s mother reminded him, it 
was dark almost all day, where they came 
from,—so near the North Pole. 

Sometimes Mother White Bear would 
lead the way along the beach till they came 
to the river. It began just behind the falls 
that shot over the cliff in rainbow-tinted 


SUMMER IN ALASKA 31 

spray. Along that river was a bear-path 
beaten hard into the soft soil by the feet 
of hundreds of other bears black and 
brown and gray, who fished every year 
along the bank. There the two explorers 
would catch salmon and leaping trout, and 
sometimes they found great piles of fish 
that had been washed ashore by the spring 
floods. These expeditions were a bit of a 
risk for a polar bear, and Sitka’s mother 
was conscious that their white coats no 
longer blended with the background of 
white ice that Mother Nature intended 
them to live on. Still, they could always 
return to their cave on the berg to sleep. 
It floated so slowly that they could ramble 
all day on shore, and still swim back to it 
when night came. For Mother White Bear 
could swim as fast as a motor boat when 
she wanted to. 

One thing she always avoided, and that 
was the settlements where Indians, and 
sometimes white men, lived. When they 
passed a town, she would “lay low.” For it 
was not of other animals she was afraid, 


32 SITKA, THE SNOW BABY 

so long as she was with Sitka to protect 
him, but of the red men. 

She was, however, careful to keep out of 
the way of the huge brown bears that lived 
along the shore. One day they had smelled 
ripe blueberries, and she had led Sitka cau¬ 
tiously ashore for a taste of the fruit. It 
was boggy where they grew. The heavy 
rains had left the ground soaked with mois¬ 
ture, and they had to keep to the firm 
ground around the edge. Even then, some¬ 
times, the cub would slip on a soft bit of 
moss and sink to his armpits in the oozy 
swamp or tundra, before his mother could 

yank him out by the scruff of his neck. 

• 

Here they felt the first mosquitoes Sitka 
had ever known. But they couldn’t do much 
damage, through his thick fur, except 
around his face. By and by, along came a 
huge brown bear, a kadiak bear, larger 
than Mother White Bear. Sitka’s mother 
promptly hid him in a thick clump of alders, 
but the kadiak never even looked in their 
direction. He was following his nose to the 
blueberry bog. 


SUMMER IN ALASKA 


Now they had noticed how thick the mos¬ 
quitoes were, out over the bog. There were 
black clouds of them. Mosquitoes are worse 
in the short Alaska summer than anywhere 
else in the whole United States, because the 
ground is so wet and the sun so hot. The 
big brown bears and the little black bears 
that live in Southern Alaska always go to 
the mountains for the summer to get away 
from the mosquitoes, because on the cool, 
windy mountainsides the maddening insects 
cannot live. But it is a great temptation 
to come down sometimes and go blueberry- 
ing, where the berries are thickest. 

This old brown bear, Sitka’s mother whis¬ 
pered to him, as they stood hiding in the 
alder thicket, was very likely on his way 
to the mountains for the two hot months. 
But first he was going to cross the bog. 
“And the mosquitoes will eat him alive.” 

Sitka wondered how such tiny insects 
could harm such a great, shaggy brute as 
the kadiak bear. 

“Suppose we watch and find out, “his 
mother suggested 


CHAPTER VI 

BLUEBERRIES AND MOSQUITOES 

Y ES, sir, those mosquitoes will almost 
eat him alive!” Sitka’s mother assured 

him. 

Sitka, wondering greatly, watched, as the 
huge old kadiak bear lumbered across the 
bog. Sure enough, the mosquitoes followed 
him in swarms. A black cloud of them hung 
over him, singing their horrid song. They 
settled black on his fur, but that did him no 
harm. They could not reach through to his 
hide. But there was, of course, no fur to 
protect his eyes and nostrils, and the insects 
began settling on his eyelids and on the tip 
of his nose till he had to paw. them off an¬ 
grily. And my, how they could sting! Every 
time they poked their beaks into him for 
a drop of blood, they left a tiny drop of 

34 


BLUEBERRIES AND MOSQUITOES 35 

poison in the wound, and made it burn and 
swell. By and by the poor old fellow’s eye¬ 
lids were so swollen that he could not open 
his eyes to see where he was going. He 
just wandered around and around in the 
bog, till he thought he never would find his 
way out again. He had come that way for 
the berries, but his lips and tongue were 
now so swollen from the mosquito bites that 
he could not even enjoy the fruit. 

But at last he happened to wander near 
the edge of the bog. Then he heard the 
sound of roaring water, where a river came 
rushing down the mountainside to the sea. 
Making blindly for the sound, he plunged 
into an icy pool, where he could cool his 
fevered face. And there he stayed, just 
the tip of his nose above water so he could 
breathe, until the swelling had gone down 
and he could see to go on up into the moun¬ 
tains. 

“Once upon a time,” Sitka’s mother told 
him, “a big brown bear tried to cross the 
swamp, and the mosquitoes bit him till he 
couldn’t see, and he just wandered around 


36 SITKA, THE SNOW BABY 

and around in that swamp till he starved 
to death. And all the time, the mosquitoes 
kept pricking him for the tiny drop of his 
blood that each one got. That is what I 
meant when I said they could fairly eat one 
alive,—tiny as they are, when there are so 
many of them.” 

Sitka looked back wonderingly at the 
kadiak bear that had had such a narrow 
escape. He was shuffling rapidly up the 
mountainside. 

The next time the polar cub and his 
mother went exploring, they saw a band of 
Indians camping on the river bank. The 
women and children, dressed in bright hued 
calicoes, were fishing and gathering berries, 
and cooking fish over little fires. Now fire 
was something that Sitka had never seen 
before, and it looked so pretty that he 
wanted to feel of one. But Mother White 
Bear was terribly afraid of fire, because it 
was something she did not understand, and 
she kept him in hiding among the tall ferns. 
It was dangerous enough, she said, for a 
white bear to go into the woods at all, when 


BLUEBERRIES AND MOSQUITOES 37 

the red men were about. 

By and by they saw a band of Indian 
men start up the mountainside. When they 
had passed out of sight. Sitka’s mother be¬ 
gan leading him up another way. Far ahead, 
they could see the peaks and hollows filled 
with snow, and she thought it would feel 
good to roll in the snow again. Their fur 
was much too warm for this kind of weath¬ 
er. Besides, she smelled wild mushrooms, 
and she meant to have a feast. In the snow 
they could hide perfectly, should the red 
men come near. 

There were choice berries and other good 
things along the way to eat. They started 
following the river, where the rainbow 
trout leapt out of the water every now and 
again. They padded along as soundlessly 
as possible on their furry feet. The clouds 
were gathering about the peaks, throwing 
cool shadows over the woods. It would 
probably rain by and by, but they didn’t 
mind in the least. They really enjoyed be¬ 
ing out in the rain. 

At first their way lay along the bear path 


38 SITKA, THE SNOW BABY 

where the earth had been beaten hard along 
the river bank. On one side, the icy water 
swirled over rocks and fallen logs, or slid 
in smooth sheets over the gold-specked 
sands. For this was a land where much 
gold was found. On the other side of the 
path, rank meadow grass grew high on the 
moist soil, and even Sitka’s mother could 
not see above its waving tops. The cub 
slipped into the soft black mud, till no one 
would have believed, when his mother fished 
him out, that he had ever been a little white 
bear. 

In this tall grass they could hear queer 
rustlings,—little squeals and scufflings, and 
Sitka wondered what could be going on in 
there. By and by the grass was not so tall. 
It was only about as high as Mother White 
Bear. They were on a steep slope now, 
where the trees had all been burned to 
blackened stumps, and the bunch grass 
grew. Suddenly a sound of many hooves 
thudded along the ground, and Mother 
White Bear drew Sitka into hiding between 
two granite boulders. A few minutes later, 


BLUEBERRIES AND MOSQUITOES 39 

a herd of reindeer went leaping and bound¬ 
ing over the grass and up the mountainside. 
These Alaskan caribou can stand weather 
60 degrees below zero. But in summer they 
enjoy three months of feasting on the bunch 
grass. 

At last the two bears reached a ridge 
where they could see ever and ever so far. 
They could look back along the way they 
had come, across the level stretch of grass 
and down the river glinting in the sun. They 
could even see where the ocean beat against 
the cliffs in white foam, and beyond, where 
the white bergs drifted. Up here the wind 
was cold, and snow lay in the shady places. 

Then that same band of reindeer went 
leaping across the side of the mountain op¬ 
posite, and on up the steep slopes. After 
them came racing the Indians, trying to 
head them off and capture them. They 
use reindeer for both horses and cows,— 
driving them, milking them, and using their 
hide to make their clothing, boats and 
houses. That is, they do, when they capture 
them. They had all passed out of sight 


40 


SITKA, THE SNOW BABY 


in a twinkling and Sitka never knew 
whether they caught them or not. He hoped 
the beautiful brown animals had escaped. 

But that night he found he had troubles 
of his own. 


CHAPTER VII 


AN ADVENTURE 

I DO hope our ice-berg doesn’t drift too 
far away!” said Mother White Bear. 
“We’d spend another day on the mountain, ' 
if I thought it was safe to.” 

“Let’s stay,” begged Sitka. 

The way now grew steeper, and the river 
grew narrower and swifter, until the bunch 
grass gave way to tall ferns and the 
ground was soft with pretty colored mosses. 

In winter the reindeer paw the snow 
away with their feet and eat these mosses. 
Next came pale green willows and dark 
green spruce and cedar trees. The Snow 
Baby, sniffing their piny fragrance, rolled 
delightedly on the soft ground beneath 
them. 

Later the slopes were all wet moss, into 

41 


42 SITKA, THE SNOW BABY 

which the wee fellow sank so deep that his 
mother tried to lead him along the fallen 
tree trunks. But they too were slippery 
with moss, and every now and again he 
would slide off and have to be rescued. But 
then, there were the finest, big, juicy ber¬ 
ries ! Blue-berries, thimble-berries, fat ripe 
huckleberries, tart cranberries, and mild, 
sweet service-berries. It was a paradise for 
bears! 

There were mushrooms, too, growing 
around the hollow logs, and Mother White 
Bear knew just which it was safe to eat, 
and which were poisonous. My, how she 
did love mushrooms! 

“Mother,” Sitka begged 2 “let’s stay here 
all the time.” 

But she explained that the summer is 
very short, just July and August, here in 
this part of the world, and soon would come 
ice and snow again, and they would have 
to go back to sea, where they could fish. 
Besides, she preferred the sea. 

Sitka found it hard to imagine it ever 
being cold there, where the sun shone so 


AN ADVENTURE 


43 


hot! But by September, she told him, would 
come the long rains, and the days would 
grow shorter and shorter, till in mid¬ 
winter it was terrifically cold on these 
mountains. 

Returning the way they had come, they 
found the Indians still singing and laughing 
about their little cook-fires. Along the river 
bank stood their baskets heaped with red 
and purple berries, and Sitka grabbed a 
pawful every chance he got. But Mother 
White Bear led him away around the Indian 
camp, as softly as she could walk, for 
“Safety First” was her motto where the red 
men were concerned. 

Sitka was exhausted now, and they w^ere 
eager to get back to their cave in the ice¬ 
berg. But the little berg, which Mother 
White Bear recognized by its shape, was 
away off behind two smaller bergs. Her 
first thought was to swim clear around 
them, but the cub was by now so tired and 
sleepy that he began whimpering and beg¬ 
ging her to carry him. How she longed to 
get back to the safety of their cave, where 


44 SITKA, THE SNOW BABY 

he could sleep away the strange, sunlit 
night. 

As the bergs were drifting in the blue 
summer sea, there was a narrow lane of 
water they might swim between the two 
new bergs, to reach their home. Well, she 
decided, she would chance it. She was a 
powerful swimmer, and Sitka could cling to 
her tail. If only those huge chunks of ice 
would stop drifting about so! 

She had swum perhaps half this nar¬ 
row channel when she suddenly became 
aware that the walls of ice that towered 
on either side were closer than when 
she had started. The two bergs were 
floating together, and the spray that 
dashed against their sides began to fill 
her eyes with mist, and her ears with 
the sound of the surf. Sitka, paddling 
wearily along behind her, with her stub of 
a tail in his mouth, began to squeal that he 
was being drowned, for the waves were 
chopping right over his head. 

Mother White Bear redoubled her efforts, 
knowing that if they did not get through 


AN ADVENTURE 


45 


the channel quickly, they would surely be 
crushed between those two walls of ice. 
Anxiously she measured the distance that 
lay ahead, then with a backward glance she 
made a hasty estimate of the distance that 
lay behind them. Yes, they must be just 
about half way through the channel. 

But ahead the space was narrowed till it 
seemed as if the icy walls must clash to¬ 
gether before they could pass them. And 
the tide was all against her. Swim as she 
might, she could not seem to swim fast 
enough. How she wished now that she had 
taken the long, safe way around. But it 
was too late. 

But was it?—If only she were headed the 
other way, the tide would help instead of 
hinder her. She glanced behind once more. 
To her surprise, the way was widening, in¬ 
stead of narrowing, behind them. In fact, 
the icy walls were drifting together in a V, 
and they were headed toward the point of 
the V. 

Quick as thought, she turned, and began 
towing the tirecl Sitka back the way they 


i 


46 SITKA, THE SNOW BABY 

had come. Then the ice ahead came together 
with a grinding roar, and the wave chop 
nearly strangled them. But she swam on, 
and the wee cub behind her, till they were 
out in open water. One last mightly effort 
and they were safe! An instant later the 
icy walls clashed again, grinding together 
until the channel was entirely closed. But 
they were safe! 


CHAPTER VIII 


WOLVES AND SALMON 

W HEN Mother White Bear saw that 
they could not get back to their own 
berg, she towed Sitka around the neighbor¬ 
ing bergs to see if they could not find a new 
home among them. They were of course 
tiny bergs,—hardly deserving the name, 
but still affording them cool and comforta¬ 
ble shelter through the long daylight 
nights. But all were to steep to climb. 

There was nothing for it, then, but to 
return to shore. As she swam back through 
the icy water, so pleasant after their hot 
day, she wondered where they could hide 
themselves in the strange brilliance of the 
Alaskan summer night. Nowhere along 
shore, certainly, with those Indians en¬ 
camped so near, and the excursion steamers 

47 


48 SITKA, THE SNOW BABY 

of the white men passing every now and 
again. 

There seemed nothing for it but to return 
to the snow fields of the high mountains. 
So long as the summer lasted, there was 
food in plenty. Later the salmon streams 
would freeze, and they would have to seek 
their fish from the sea. But if they headed 
generally Northward in their wanderings, 
along the snow-capped range, they would 
soon be back in a land better suited to their 
heavy furs. Polar bears are, like all bears, 
great wanderers. It was the first time in 
her life that Mother White Bear had ever 
visited land in summer; but once in early 
winter she had ranged Southward over the 
pack ice, in w 7 hich she had denned for her 
winter sleep. The breaking up of the pack 
in spring had left her to summer on an 
island with Sitka’s older brother, then a 
wee cub, though they had finally made their 
way back home by swimming many miles 
through the open sea. 

Tonight as Sitka and his mother neared 
shore again, they were startled to hear the 


WOLVES AND SALMON 


49 


baying of wolves. They hid behind an up- 
jutting boulder just off shore, and waited 
to see what was going to happen. Through 
the meadows that here lay between woods 
and shore came a herd of deer, and from 
their enormous leaps and bounds Mother 
White Bear decided that it must be a mat¬ 
ter of life and death. 

Behind them the tall grass, man-high, 
moved here and there as if blown by a wind, 
but it must be something else that moved it. 
Then out on the rocky shore came the ter¬ 
ror-stricken deer, and close at their heels, 
there emerged from the concealing grasses 
three great fierce white wolves. The deer 
were all but exhausted now, for they stum¬ 
bled as they leapt. They must have come a 
great distance,—perhaps from the moun¬ 
tain-sides where they browsed in summer. 
But the wolves had gained on them and the 
race was nearly done. 

Then the leader of the herd, raising his 
great antlers, leaped into the water. After 
him plunged the others, and away they 
swam, straight toward the rim of a green 


50 


SITKA, THE SNOW BABY 


island that lay off-shore. The wolves 
stopped at the water’s edge, for they are 
not good swimmers, baying their disap¬ 
pointment till the fearful sound echoed and 
re-echoed from the tossing bergs. 

But were the three wolves to go hungry? 
Sitka watched with frightened eyes as the 
trio seated themselves in a row and howled 
their disappointment to the curtain of light 
that now began to glow in the North. There 
was nothing else to do but to watch the 
wolves and the Aurora, for Mother White 
Bear would not venture ashore till they 
had gone. ■ * h 

Never would Sitka forget the shimmer¬ 
ing silver folds of the curtain that hung 
from the Auroral arch, the star-strewn sky, 
and the midnight sun circling the horizon, 
glinting pink from the blue-white bergs 
that tossed in the purple sea. The grinding 
of berg on berg, the smell of sea-weed and 
the weird howling of the wolves, the slap- 
slap of the waves, comfortingly cold 
against the furry sides of the wanderers 
from the North, and the gurgling of the 



The wolves stopped at the water’s edge. 



















WOLVES AND SALMON 51 

glacial salmon stream, all these things went 
to make up the scene. Then the silver cur¬ 
tain ceased to shimmer, and nothing re¬ 
mained but the long flames of white fire 
that sprang from the zenith. 

As suddenly as they had appeared, the 
three wolves were gone, doubtless to chase 
rabbits for their breakfast. 

Mother White Bear now led the way back 
along the same river they had explored be¬ 
fore. Sitka was tired and sleepy, but she 
would not stop for him to rest till she had 
him back so high on the mountainside that 
they could burrow into a snow bank. “Now 
we are safe,” she told him “and we can take 
it leisurely.” Sitka drifted into dreams of 
catching mammoth salmon. 

Now Unga’s tribe were of the Eskimos 
who hunt on the inland ice. Probably, no 
one knew how long ago, their people had 
come over the ice from Greenland, skirting 
the Arctic Ocean. Those there had been 
among them, the tale had been handed 
down to them, who, wandering Southward, 
had seen some of the Aleutian Islands born, 


52 SITKA, THE SNOW BABY 

spewed up as molten rock from volcanic 
depths. Within the memory of Unga’s 
father two of these islands had shot fire 
into the sky and covered all the sea with 
ashes. Strange sights had been seen in that 
strange land,—and might be seen again. 
For geography was still in the making. 

It was also rumored that tribesmen who 
had ventured far in their bidarkas, ventur¬ 
ing from one island to another, had found 
them leading in a chain straight across to 
Siberia, dividing Bering Sea from the Pa¬ 
cific. All this had been repeated around the 
fire of the council house. 

Had Sitka and Mother White Bear but 
known it, they had drifted to one of the 
three great sounds of the West Coast, Bris¬ 
tol Bay, in the language of the white man. 
From this a chain of mountains reached 
North-East to a branch of the Yukon, which 
mighty river they later followed to the sea 
as it skirted another mountain range. For 
from the Bay, where the air was warmed 
and moistened by a branch of the current 
that crosses the ocean from Japan, they 


WOLVES AND SALMON 


53 


traversed many a hundred miles of moun¬ 
tainside before they reached that river 
whose red salmon tempted them to follow 
its length. 

That river, cut deep by the rush of the 
spring ice, ran Westward across that 
mighty land to empty into Bering Sea, there 
to spread fan-wise amid a thousand wooded 
islands into Norton Sound. 

But before Sitka and his mother had 
traversed its length, they had skirted the 
sheer cliffs of foaming gorges, and fought 
mosquitoes along miles of lake-dotted tun¬ 
dra. Their award was that they could often 
creep up on sleeping ducks or plover, who 
slept in countless thousands on these lakes 
as their clans gathered for the great migra¬ 
tion Southward for the winter. The two 
bears were overjoyed when at last, after 
weeks of untiring travel, they could see the 
waves breaking in white mist against the 
spruce-dark shore. The iron mountains be¬ 
hind them shone rose-colored. They had 
feasted fat on the red and silver salmon, 
and the grayling and whitefish of the teem- 


54 SITKA, THE SNOW BABY 

ing river, and now at last the only barrier 
between them and the open sea was a series 
of sand-bars and whirlpools and an excur¬ 
sion steamer, all to be avoided with equal 
care. But that is getting ahead of our 
story. 

The river which cascaded from high up 
the mountain-side was agleam with the 
shining bodies of samlets, young silver 
salmon with red spots and black markings 
on their sides. Such luscious fish the little 
white bear had never tasted as those they 
waded into the stream to catch. 

In the spring the parent salmon,—huge, 
silvery fish with black spots on their sides, 
—had left the sea, with its teeming food 
supply, to swim up-stream to the spawning 
beds. The gold seekers of ? 98 had often 
watched as the agile fish swam through the 
rushing torrents, leaping up the waterfalls 
as easily and gracefully as a kitten leaps 
to the top of a hedge. High in the moun¬ 
tains, where the stream runs shallow, they 
had laid their eggs and left their young to 
hatch. And now the stream was fairly 


WOLVES AND SALMON 


55 


alive with these samlets, some of them only 
a few months old, some as much as two 
years. The spring of their third year they 
would be large enough to go down to the 
sea. 

Mother White Bear showed Sitka a sal¬ 
mon laying her eggs. First the great four- 
foot fish lay down in the gravel of the shal¬ 
lows and rounded out a nest with her side. 
There she left hundreds and hundreds of 
tough, elastic shelled eggs, hardly half the 
size of peas. Before they left the eggs to 
their fate, the parent fish would cover them 
over with gravel so that the water could 
not wash them away. Out of so many, 
many eggs, surely enough would hatch and 
survive to fill the river with samlets. 


CHAPTER IX 


THE BIRTH OF AN ICE-BERG 

L IKE all explorers, Sitka and his mother 

knew not what unexpected dangers 

might lie in their pathway, as they turned 

their noses Northward. But like all ex- 

« 

plorers, they thrilled at thought of the new 
scenes they might enjoy. 

Their way lay first along the crest of the 
range,—the Northern extension of that 
great mountain system which in California 
is called the Sierra Nevada and in Oregon 
and Washington the Cascades and the Sel- 
kirks. The same great upheavals of the 
earth’s crust, the same glaciers and volca¬ 
noes, helped to build them all. 

In the tonic coolness of the high peaks, 
Sitka raced and rolled like a puppy, plung¬ 
ing whoofing, into the soft snow, or coast- 

56 


THE BIRTH OF AN ICE-BERG 57 

ing when the crust was hard. For a little 
while this land of sternness, hardship and 
hunger, smiled in the sunshine, and life was 
not so serious as it had been, and would be 
again. With the abundance of food and ex¬ 
ercise, Sitka was growing fast. His muscles 
were as hard as iron. He could go for miles 
over the mountain-sides without tiring. At 
the same time his mother was teaching him 
a million things a polar bear should know 
about the world in which soon he would 
have to make his living and defend himself 
against the elements. 

They watched an Arctic fox to see how 
he caught the ptarmigan, those brown 
and white grouse which are so abundant 
on the lower passes. These wild hens of 
the Arctic, nesting in the snow banks, 
and gradually changing their brown sum¬ 
mer costumes for the white of winter, 
were not so well hidden as they would 
be later, when their camouflage would 
be complete. But try as he might, fat, 
clumsy Sitka could never creep up on them 
as did the sly white Reynard. He could 


58 SITKA, THE SNOW BABY 

swim after his salmon as the fox could not, 
but his mouth watered in vain for the ptar¬ 
migan. 

They gobbled down luscious fungi, those 
fan-shaped mushrooms that grow on birch 
trees, and they browsed like cattle on the 
juicy grass that had sprung up in the paths 
of snow-slides. All that was delightful. But 
the cub shivered at the weird, laughing cry 
of the great Northern loon that haunted the 
glacial lakes. 

He was fascinated, though, by the whist¬ 
lers, (Arctic woodchucks), who disappeared 
into their holes at his approach, peeking out 
at him, then disappearing, peeking and dis¬ 
appearing, till Sitka was frantic with the 
longing to catch one of them. But try as 
he might, he was never quick enough for 
those little fellows. Their shrill, whistling 
calls tantalized him on every side. 

They saw moose and mountain goats, por¬ 
cupines who gnawed the spruce trees with¬ 
out even bothering to look up at them, and 
ermine who swam after their fish, twisting 
and turning as lithe as eels. They crossed 


THE BIRTH OF AN ICE-BERG 59 

glaciers, leaping the crevices and coasting 
down the slopes of these almost motionless 
rivers of ice. On and on they wandered, 
through the shortening days, now cooled by 
gray clouds which brought flurries of soft 
snow to the higher slopes. By September 
they had gales of wind, with sleet and hail¬ 
stones, and the clouds were constantly 
forming on the mountain-tops and sinking 
lower and lower, till all the tundra between 
the mountains and the sea lay hidden by 
gray fog. But Sitka loved the coldness of 
it, dressed as he was in his thick white 
furs, and he was the happiest little bear in 
all Alaska when at last Mother White Bear 
told him they were now far enough North 
to return to the sea in safety. 

How many hundreds of miles they had 
traveled they had no means of knowing, but 
bears are tireless travelers, and polar bears 
are the most tireless of all. The hardest 
was when they began following the rim of 
one of the narrow ice-carved canyons, with 
its roaring river, and innumerable falls that 
had to be circled about. But at last they 


60 SITKA, THE SNOW BABY 

came out at a fiord of the sea. The wind 
of an icy rain was frosting the gray-green 
waves of the great twenty-foot tide and 
blowing balls of the scud into the tree-tops 
of the encircling woods. The air rang with 
the cries of sea birds. Sitka leaped and 
frisked after the foam, glorying in the salt 
smell of the sea. 

Further out, there were the great bergs 
growling and grinding against one another 
and making great waves in the fiord. A 
distant glacier cracked with a sound like 
thunder as a mammoth chunk of it broke 
off and a new berg was born, to toss and 
splash and cause even more excitement 
among the lashing waves. 

“Hurray!” whoofed Sitka. “This feels 
like home again.” And following Mother 
White Bear, he plunged off the pink lime¬ 
stone cliff into the water and started swim¬ 
ming with great, powerful strokes of his 
fore paws. 

Had anyone told the cub as he frisked so 
exuberantly in his favorite element that 
anything ugly and dangerous inhabited 


THE BIRTH OF AN ICE-BERG 


61 


those winging waves, he would not have 
believed it. And yet at that very moment— 
but that is another chapter! 


CHAPTER X 


MONSTERS OF THE SEA 

O N a sea ruffled to purple in the wind, 
Mother White bear, busy catching fish, 
glimpsed three large black fins. 

Three piratical black fins, farther out at 
sea, approached like the sails of so many 
fishing dories, all in a row. That, she knew, 
meant orcas—killer whales! With a loud 
whoof she summoned Sitka to turn back 
and make for shore. He responded with 
that swift obedience she had taught him. 
But though he was swift, the orcas were 
swifter. But he was not far from a high 
rock that jutted up out of shoal water. 
When he had scrambled up beside his 
mother, his legs were trembling and his 
breath quite gone. 

When the disappointed orcas had swum 

away again, their great black fins rising 

62 


MONSTERS OF THE SEA 


63 


from the curve of their backs, and the two 
white streaks on their sides shouting a 
warning to those that could read it, Mother 
White Bear was reminded of a battle she 
had once seen between an orca and a cacha¬ 
lot, one of the giant sperm whales. Of 
course Sitka wanted the story. 

“Fortunately,” said Mother White Bear, 
“cachalots never come as far North as this. 
It was the time I drifted so far South on 
the ice that I saw this battle. A cachalot 
mother had come to a quiet inlet off the 
coast of Southern Alaska to rear her baby. 
It must have been an exceptional case, for 
though I have heard of orcas going far 
South, I never knew of but the one cachalot 
to come so far North. But a traveler such 
as myself sees many an unusual happen- 
mg.” 

“I’m going to be a traveler, too,” vowed 
Sitka. 

“You certainly will, if you grow up into 
a regular bear,” she agreed. “But first you 
know that whales are mammals, like bears 
and dogs, and nui’se their babies.” 


64 SITKA, THE SNOW BABY 

“Honestly?” marvelled Sitka. 

“Yes. And the orca mother has a way of 
carrying her calf tucked behind her left 
flipper, or as it were, in her left arm, and 
nursing it as she lies floating on a quiet 
sea. Both she and her calf are cream col¬ 
ored on their under sides, so that the fish 
below cannot see them so plainly. For of 
course they live largely on fish. 

“She herself is content to eat the great, 
sluggish fish that live in shallow seas, 
though she is also fond.of seals, and I have 
seen her devour one whole. The one I saw 
and I suppose they are all alike, was lean 
and quick, and could dive and swim with 
marvelous agility. The Eskimos would have 
found very little blubber on her. And un¬ 
like the great, stupid, lubberly creatures 
you saw the Eskimos hunting, this particu¬ 
lar whale is a good fighter, as you shall see, 
and cunning too. But with all this, she 
loves her calf.” 

“What happened?” begged Sitka impa¬ 
tiently. 

“I was watching from a cliff,” continued 


MONSTERS OF THE SEA 65 

Mother White Bear. First I saw this cacha¬ 
lot mother nursing her calf under her left 
flipper, and I was amazed that such a huge 
creature could be so gentle. For this giant 
creature had a head nearly a third of her 
entire size, and she could open her jaws 
till you and I could have found room to den 
up for the winter right in her mouth. And 
that huge mouth was armed with teeth that 
could have crunched you in one bite.” Sitka 
shuddered. 

“Then I saw a band of orcas coming. She 
saw them, too, and started out to meet 
them, but it meant leaving her calf behind, 
and she turned back to the little fellow, per¬ 
haps afraid that something might come by 
and eat him while her back was turned. But 
if she stayed, the orcas would get him. So 
she turned once more to meet their advanc¬ 
ing front. Picture that row of black fins 
coming all in a row! 

“Well, that cachalot just simply opened 
that huge mouth of hers and snapped her 
jaws on the first orca she could reach, and 
the water turned red around them!—The 


66 


SITKA, THE SNOW BABY 


other orcas,—there were five of them in 
that pack,—tried to swim around either 
side of her, at a good safe distance, but she 
was so afraid they would reach her calf 
that she chased them ferociously, without 
a thought for her own safety, and you 
would have laughed to see these same orcas, 
these dread killer whales, turning tail and 
admitting their defeat, five to one that they 
were! But they would have stood not a 
chance with those great jaws of hers, swift 
and fierce as the orcas were.” 

“Everything is afraid of something else, 
isn’t it, Mother?” said Sitka. 

“There is nothing I fear for myself save 
wolves,” said Mother White Bear. 

“I am afraid of that Eskimo boy,” Sitka 
admitted. 

“And perhaps he is afraid of you.” 

“And of orcas?” the little bear surmised. 

Note—The Eskimos around Bering Sea believe that the 
killer whales are wolves in sea form. They tell it that 
when the world was young the wolves of the land used to 
enter the sea, changing their form as they did so and 
becoming orcas. When they returned to land, they 
changed back to wolves. To this day the little brown 
men fear the orca as the wolf of the sea. 



67 


MONSTERS OF THE SEA 

A sweep of her paw and Mother White 
Bear had landed a shining fish, which she 
proceeded to eat, bidding Sitka go catch one 
for himself. For he needed practice. 

After they had both dined and slept, and 
felt ready to go on, they swam about thirty 
miles fairly close to shore. A polar bear 
can swim forty miles at a stretch if she has 
to. Sitka tired, and his mother allowed 
him to tow himself along by her tail once 
in a while to rest him. And again they 
caught fish and climbed aboard a floating 
ice pan to sleep the lengthening night away. 

That was their program for many days, 
—swimming so close to shore that they 
could see the ragged outline of the pointed 
green-black firs when it was not too foggy. 
The thunder of the surf was in their ears, 
and the taste of the bitter brine was in their 
nostrils, for the wind blew the sea into 
foam. 

Then one day, their first sunny day in 
weeks, they came to the edge of the pack 
ice. 


CHAPTER XI 


TOOTH AND FANG 

T HE winter sun circled lower and lower 
about the horizon as the ice packed 
more and more solidly in the bay. By the 
first of November it was forty degrees be¬ 
low zero. But Sitka and his mother loved it. 

They had fed fat all fall, in preparation 
for their long winter sleep. Then Sitka had 
grown amazingly. He could now swim un¬ 
der ice, if he had to escape the lunge of 
some infuriated walrus, or he could fell a 
seal with one blow of his powerful fore-arm. 

Now that they were back on the pack-ice, 
they often saw Unga, the Eskimo boy who 
had tried to capture Sitka as a wee cub. 
Mother White Bear could not forgive that 
escapade. Sometimes the boy tried to 
creep up on the white cub when he was a 


TOOTH AND FANG 69 

4 ' 

little separated from his mother, and the 
lad vowed to the boys of his village that the 
cub’s fur should be his. 

The little Eskimo and his tribe lived on 
a peninsula that reached far out into the 
polar sea, now all pack-ice, which rose in 
ridges like the waves of the sea it covered. 
Their igloos were cunningly fashioned of 
stone blocks into huts as round as bee-hives, 
and had to be entered by stooping low 
through a winding tunnel, and finally get¬ 
ting down on hands and knees. But once 
inside, they were as warm as the lamp of 
blubber with its wick of moss could make it, 
and these hardy people half hibernated 
comfortably enough through weather sixty 
below zero. 

Unga, like all Eskimos, had to make it his 
chief concern in life to find enough to eat, 
—and he loved bear meat best of all. Second, 
he had to have warm clothing, and warm 
bedding, or he would die. Bear fur was 
his favorite blanket, and bearskin the ma¬ 
terial of which his tribe fashioned their 
knickerbockers. After his fourteenth year 


70 SITKA, THE SNOW BABY 

he used to join the bands who went out, 
for weeks and sometimes months at a time 
in summer, taking skin tents on their dog 
sleds, in search of the great white bears, 
and the half-human track of one of these 
in the snow, plainly visible even in the blue 
moonlight of the Arctic dusk,—would send 
a thrill of delight down Unga’s spine. The 
black eyes and nose tip, which was all that 
could be seen of the snowy animals against 
the snow, unless they moved, was the signal 
for setting the dogs on their trail. But 
Sitka always had the presence of mind to 
run against the wind, so that the dogs could 
not scent him. Most of the time he kept 
well out at sea. 

When the ice lay shiny and free of snow, 
however, bears and Eskimos alike used to 
go seal hunting in the famine of spring. 
That way, Sitka and Unga often met. Their 
method of hunting was curiously alike, for 
Unga tied fur to his feet and his tread was 
noiseless. As a seal would come up to its 
breathing hole in the ice, a series of loud 
blowing sounds meant that it was filling its 


TOOTH AND FANG 


71 


lungs for a dive. At this time the hunter 
boy or bear, could approach unheard. Be¬ 
tween whiles he laid low behind a furrow 
of the ice. If the seal took alarm, the boy, 
lying flat on his stomach, would cunningly 
move his feet like seal’s hind flippers and 
so deceive his intended victim. Sitka learned 
that trick of him. Then would come the 
boy’s harpoon, or the bear’s harpooning 
claws, thrust through the hole into the head 
of the disappearing seal. 

In their igloos these stubby, fur-clad little 
brown people, who were Unga’s people, 
would spend the winter half starving and 
half feasting on their occasional catch of 
seal or bear meat. Sitka often used to see 
them racing through the twilight of the 
autumn day behind their dog-sleds, the 
crackling of their whips echoing from the 
great bergs. 

The water, where it lay open, now shone 
blue-black under the long night, and the 
seals remained somewhere below the ice¬ 
pack, save when they came to poke their 
noses through their air-holes. Sitka found 


72 


SITKA, THE SNOW BABY 


he was just able to scramble through the 
larger air holes. 

One day the air was such a mist of falling 
flakes that Sitka and his mother could not 
see two steps before them. The swirl and 
drift of the on-coming blizzard fairly car¬ 
ried them off their feet. Then came sharp 
ice spicules that filled the air blindingly and 
cut into their nostrils. “It is high time we 
found a place to hibernate, 1 ” decided Mother 
White Bear. But wander as they would, 
through the dark and the drift, they could 
find neither cave nor shelter. Sitka grew 
terribly sleepy, and would have curled up 
on the naked ice, but that his mother in¬ 
sisted on keeping up the search for a few 
days longer. 

Then one day—the first warning came as 
a swirl of snow. In five minutes the wind 
from the mountains had lifted them bodily 
and flung them down on the ice. Nor would 
the on-coming storm allow them to rise to 

Note—In the face of storms like these, Peary and 
other white explorers (aided by the Eskimos) have sought 
to make their way into our “farthest North.” 



TOOTH AND FANG 


73 


their feet again, but blew them along, till, 
with a roar that nearly split their ear¬ 
drums, black darkness pressed upon them. 
In that same instant they went over the 
edge of a fissure that cut a deep V in the ice. 

Their fall was softened by the snow that 
filled the crevice, and turning their misfor¬ 
tune into good, they welcomed the shelter 
it gave them from the freezing wind, and 
huddled together till the storm should have 
done its worst. The snow drifted in upon 
them, but the warmth of their breathing 
kept a little air space melted about their 
faces. But Mother White Bear knew better 
than to spend the winter in such a danger¬ 
ous place. 

Later they had a dreadful time scramb¬ 
ling up the slippery sides of their prison, 
but they clung with their steel claws to 
every roughness of the ice walls, and finally 
flung themselves over the edge. 

Another time it was the Eskimo village 
they unwittingly wandered into in the 
storm. It was an igloo with its winding 
entrance tunnel against which they had 


74 SITKA, THE SNOW BABY 

taken shelter, and within that igloo—as 
luck would have it—lived the boy who had 
set his heart on having Sitka’s fur. 

When, three days later, the two bears 
were awakened by hearing a savage snarl¬ 
ing as the husky dogs began digging them 
out, they realized that it was to be tooth 
and fang if they were to get out of the 
place alive. 

Savage as wolves were the great gray 
dogs of Unga’s father’s sledge team. Savage 
and hungry!—And fond of bear meat!—It 
was a circle of fangs they faced as they rose 
on their haunches to meet the foe. But 
Sitka and Mother White Bear had fangs of 
their own, and what was more to their 
advantage, each powerful fore-paw was 
armed with a set of razor-sharp claws, and 
each fist could have felled any dog on whose 
skull it could land a blow. 

Fortunately for the two bears, Unga was 
asleep in the igloo when the trouble started. 
“Snap!” went the jaws of the foremost 
husky dog, the leader of the team, a savage 
brute, half wolf.—Sitka’s paw barely es- 


TOOTH AND FANG 


75 


caped. Then “swish” went Sitka’s right 
fore-paw, ripping the husky’s side in a long 
red gash. “Snap!” “Snap!” “Swish!” raged 
the combat, the two bears just holding their 
own against a semicircle of five huskies. 
Mother White Bear could handle four to 
Sitka’s one. 

It all happened in a twinkling. Then just 
as Mother White Bear gave the cub the 
signal to make a dash with her for the 
open, on came two more huskies who had 
broken loose from a team that stood har¬ 
nessed within sound of the rumpus. 

“Slash! slash!” went Mother White Bear, 
sending the two new dogs howling. “Biff, 
biff, biff!” and she had keeled over three 
more of her foes. “Slash!” went Sitka, nearly 
finishing another of the huskies. Just as he 
wheeled to follow his mother, Unga ap¬ 
peared at the door of the tunnel, bone- 
tipped spear in hand. “Biff!” went Sitka, 
whirling like a spinning top, just happening 
to knock the spear out of his enemy’s hand. 

In that instant of time, Mother White 
Bear had disappeared, doubling and dodg- 


76 SITKA, THE SNOW BABY 

ing through the igloos with one dog nipping 
at her heels. Sitka sped frantically to one 
side, knowing nothing of where he was 
headed. By one of those chances, so-called, 
that sometimes happen, he came to a seal 
hole. It was a tight squeeze, but he just 
managed to dive through it before two of 
the huskies he had wounded would have 
been upon him. 

It was the cache of the white explorers 
that finally reunited Sitka, the little white 
bear, and his mother. 

The ship of the white men lay frozen fast 
in the harbor, till Spring should once more 
come to the Arctic Circle; and two weeks 
travel by dog-sled, a ton of dried salmon 
to be fed to their sledge dogs lay beneath 
a rock pile. But though the fish lay hidden 
beneath rock and ice and snow, it was not 
hidden from the sharp noses of Sitka and 
Mother White Bear. No sooner had the 
great storm subsided than those noses, 
which peopled the Alaskan world with a 
million odors no human being could detect, 
—those wonderful noses of theirs caught 


TOOTH AND FANG 


77 


the odor of that salmon. And my! how they 
clawed away the rocks with their powerful 
claws, and my! how they feasted! Their 
furry white sides fairly stuck out before 
they had finished. Though it was time for 
their long winter sleep, they could keep 
alive on that through all the bitter polar 
night. It was a rare piece of good fortune 
for the two travelers. 

After that they found a cave in the ice, 
tiny, but snug, and large enough for the 
pair of them to curl up together comfort¬ 
ably. 

In the spring Sitka discovered that he 
had grown enormously while he slept. He 
could now tease the old bull walruses to his 
heart’s content, mischievously stealing their 
clams every time their clumsy backs were 
turned, with no fear of being overtaken and 
punished. 

He even caught himself a bellowing wal¬ 
rus calf for dinner. Life would no longer 
be so serious to young Sitka, for there re¬ 
mained absolutely nothing in all the seas 
that he feared 


78 SITKA, THE SNOW BABY 

Of course, on land, there were the fierce 
Arctic wolves and the wolfish husky dogs. 
But he had little intention of going near 
either of these. 

He feared neither cold nor darkness now, 
nor anything in all that white world save 
one living creature. He remembered the 
Eskimo lad with his spear, and his strange 
way of walking on his hind legs and wear¬ 
ing other animals’ fur, and him he did fear 
when next they met, with such a fear when 
again the boy pursued him that the little 
bear ran for his life. 

Mother White Bear finally decided that 
they should spend the summer far out at 
sea. They could ramble over the ice floes 
as far as Bering Strait, catching fish along 
the way and keeping a sharp eye out for 
any such delicacy as a chunk of whale blub¬ 
ber left behind at the Eskimo hunting 
grounds. 

As the sun circled higher and higher, 
they began to come across bird colonies on 
the rocky islets,—auks sitting in prim rows 
along the edge of the cliffs, gulls robbing 


TOOTH AND FANG 


79 


the little puffins, with a clamor of their 
shrill “ka-ka-ka,” of their catch of herring, 
sometimes the auks robbing the nesting 
gulls of their one precious egg. Again the 
pirate skuas darted hawklike to rob the 
auks of their one precious egg. It was a 
hard land, and bird and beast were hard of 
heart, for it was a bitter struggle just to 
keep alive. 

Sitka and his mother had fine times 
breakfasting on birds’ eggs. 

How the little white bear loved the thun¬ 
der of the surf, the crackle of floes break¬ 
ing from the ice-fields, and the roar of ice¬ 
berg grinding against berg! 

He loved the gray fog and the smell of 
the bitter brine, and the sleety rain of 
which they had so much. In his warm white 
furs he would have found sunshine uncom¬ 
fortable. He enjoyed this trip better than 
their accidental visit of the summer before 
on the South-floating berg. 

Never did he tire of staring at the Au¬ 
roras, and the glaciers glowing with the 
reflection of the stars, 


80 SITKA, THE SNOW BABY 

Later in the summer Mother White Bear 
became acquainted with a handsome great 
nine-foot polar bear who was a champion 
in several ways. He could swim forty miles 
through the icy seas, and he had come off 
victorious in many a battle with wolves and 
Eskimos. As the long daylight warmed the 
air, they two used to go on long fishing 
trips, leaving Sitka behind,—though the 
first thing that youngster knew, he was 
so big and self-reliant that he really pre¬ 
ferred to explore the ice floes by himself. 


CHAPTER XII 


“LET THERE BE PEACE” 

O NCE the next fall Sitka again met the 
Eskimo, who again pursued him with 
his spear. This time the little bear made a 
great dive into the sea and swam to safety 
under water. 

But apparently the little brown boy was 
determined to have his hide,—as deter¬ 
mined as the little white bear was to keep 
it. For Unga had boasted in his village that 
he meant to get that bear. He had vowed 
to have Sitka’s great fur coat. 

The next year, when Sitka had grown 
larger still, and Mother White Bear was too 
busy with his new little brother to pay him 
any attention, the Eskimo nicked his ear 
with his bone-pointed spear. After that 

he knew him by that nicked ear. The year 

81 


82 SITKA, THE SNOW BABY 

after he grazed Sitka’s side, and Sitka 
turned and pursued him angrily, as deter¬ 
mined now to get the boy as the boy was 
to get the bear. 

Year after year went by, while Sitka 
grew into a huge white monster, and Unga 
developed into a lithe little brown-faced 
man clad in the fur of his kill. And it came 
to pass that the Eskimo’s one great desire 
was to carry Sitka’s pelt to his igloo and 
deliver his boast to the admiring eyes of 
his village. And Sitka knew that the Es¬ 
kimo youth would never leave him in peace 
while they both should live. 

One autumn when Sitka was ten years 
old and the Eskimo twenty, they had both 
gone far inland over the Arctic barrens, 
and both for the same reason, in the hope 
of securing some reindeer meat. As it hap¬ 
pened, a hoard of the great, white Arctic 
wolves had also followed the deer. 

One night Sitka stood gazing at the most 
wonderful Aurora he had ever seen. Bril¬ 
liant bars of light colored like the ranbow 
marched across the Northern sky-line,— 


“LET THERE BE PEACE” 83 

always from West to East. Suddenly across 
the glowing North stalked a row of seven 
of the great white wolves. Failing to find 
the reindeer, and seeing Sitka so far from 
his native seas, they began circling toward 
him; and though the lone bear knew better 
than to hope to fight off so many foes, and 
though he took to his heels with all swift¬ 
ness, the wolves were swifter, and soon he 
was baring fang and claw to a circle of 
famished green eyes and slavering jaws. 
Sitka reared himself on his great haunches, 
towering tall above them, that he might sell 
his life dearly. 

But Unga had also seen the seven wolves, 
white against the ruddy sky. And he had 
seen the great white bear prints, and knew 
that his old-time foe was near. Now, he 
told himself with chagrin, the wolves would 
get the bear, not he,—and he could never 
bring the great white pelt to his village in 
the pride of his long-time boast. 

Like the flight of a falling star a bright 
idea shot into his head. He, armed as he 
was with the musket the white men had 


84 SITKA, THE SNOW BABY 

given his father, would fight the wolves off 
the bear! Then he would still have a chance, 
some day, of getting the bear himself. 

With the fire-arm that spoke death from 
afar, he came running to meet the wolves. 
With his musket that out-marvelled the 
sharpest spear he brought down the fore¬ 
most wolf. But the shot only wounded that 
great beast, so white against the surround¬ 
ing whiteness,—it did not stop him long. 
The surprise of that gave the little brown 
man pause. A new thought appalled him. 
Should his gun fail too often, might he not 
find himself in danger? 

On came the ravening wolf pack, and 
back fell the Eskimo with his weapon that 
here broke a leg and there caused the red 
blood to flow, but did not stop the wolves. 
Soon Unga was standing back to back with 
the great white bear, within the narrowing 
circle of their foes, aware that not the 
bear’s life alone, but his own, lay largely in 
Sitka’s fighting powers. 

But though the great bear unaided could 
not have felled so many foes, who darted 


“LET THERE BE PEACE” 85 

now on this side, now on that, under his 
guard in intent to ham-string him, nor 
could the Eskimo alone have handled so 
many with even the best of weapons, be¬ 
tween them they put first one, then another 
of the attacking hoard to rout. Where the 
great bear was taken at a disadvantage, the 
Eskimo came to the rescue. Where the 
little brown man would have been over¬ 
whelmed, the mailed white forearm of his 
furry foe sent one more of their common 
foes to writhing in an agony of deep-cut 
wounds. Now the leader wolf had turned 
the brunt of his ferocity on the weaker ani¬ 
mal, which was the man. But Unga’s mus¬ 
ket, pointed close, blew the old wolfs head 
off. Then the next in leadership of the wolf 
pack approached the bear, keen to dart un¬ 
der his mailed fist, that guarded his vitals, 
and out again before punishment de¬ 
scended. But the lightning swiftness of 
that mailed fist was aided by the roar of 
the man-made weapon close at his head, and 
he was done for. 

All this while the little brown man recog- 


86 SITKA, THE SNOW BABY 

nized with amazement that for himself as 
well as the bear it had become a matter of 
life and death. They two stood back to back, 
comrades of battle, with Sitka, red-eyed and 
furious, turning the tide of battle in his 
favor. And twin to the thought, he also 
recognized that, were it not for his musket, 
the bear would soon have been laid low on 
the snow instead of the mangled wolves. 

The bear also was bleeding, as was the 
little brown man, but both would heal 
quickly, as the wounds were not deep. But 
the wolves lay dead at their feet. 

The bear stood licking his wounds, while 
the Auroral curtain shot beauty across the 
frozen sky, as if nothing but beauty could 
exist in all the white Arctic world. Sitka 
was too blinded with blood to see his re¬ 
maining enemy,—his life-long enemy, more 
feared by far than the wolves had ever 
been. Unga could have got him then. But 
he didn’t! 

He had fought side by side with this 
great furry fellow 7 , with their two lives in 
the balance. He had fought to save the bear, 


“LET THERE BE PEACE” 


87 


and the bear’s good fight had saved his own 
life. They were fellow fighters! They had 
fought together,—and won! 

It came to him then that he no longer 
wanted the pelt of the plucky brute. He no 
longer cared to make it his boast in the vil¬ 
lage nor wear it before his igloo. Why, he 
owed a debt of gratitude to that bear, and 
the bear was already his in the sense that 
he had saved him. Besides, the great white 
beast, whom he had watched from the days 
of his wee, fat cub-hood,—this dumb brute 
who would now be so helpless against the 
pointing of the man-made musket,—had he 
not fairly won his life and freedom? 

“Do you go your way,-and I will go mine,” 
he said in his heart, and by some strange 
telepathy, Sitka in his heart understood. 
“Henceforth, let there be peace between 
us!” 

The little brown man sped away into the 
Arctic night, to the East where the reindeer 
herded, and Sitka shambled off toward the 
West, where the fish of the sea never failed 
him. 


FINNY-FOOT 


I. THE WATER PUPPY 

F INNY-FOOT first opened his round, 
wondering eyes on a world of sun- 
kissed waves, deep blue beneath a deep blue 
sky. 

The waves slapped in white foam against 
the rocks, and the sky foamed with white 
wind clouds. The rocks were slippery with 
sea-weed, and shone as sleek as the wet 
brown fur of the seals. Finny-Foot’s woolly 
white coat, which is what Harbor Seal 
babies always wear their first spring, made 
him look like just another of the fat white 
balls of foam that the April wind tossed up 
and down the yellow sand of the beach. But 
the gray gulls flying over-head knew, and 
called to one another to see the new water 
puppy. 


88 


THE WATER PUPPY 


89 


His parents, like the aunts and uncles and 
grandfather of the little colony, wore gray, 
like the ocean on a dull day, with spots of 
darker gray. But the new young cousins 
were all white like Finny-Foot. 

In the beginning, while Mother Nature 
was still trying first one kind of animal, and 
then another, to see which made the best 
pattern, these water puppies had lived on 
land, and had outside ears like any other 
dog, and four short legs on which to carry 
their fat, furry bodies. Then their great- 
great-ever-so-great grand-parents had de¬ 
cided to live on the rocks of the harbors 
up and down the sea-shore, where it would 
be easier to catch the fish on which they 
lived. Of course then Mother Nature 
changed their legs to “flippers” or fin-feet, 
so that it would be easier for them to swim. 
That is why seals look so much like fish, 
with their fore flippers for fins and their 
hind ones held together like a tail. 

They bark like dogs, though, and those 
finny-looking fore-feet help them to crawl 
about on land, as well as swim. Of course 


FINNY-FOOT 


now that they have become water animals, 
their ears are all covered with fur, so that 
you might think they didn’t have any ears 
at all. But they can hear a fish swim by, 
for all that. 

At first Finny-Foot cried when he was 
hungry, in a voice almost like that of a 
human baby, and was nursed like any other 
puppy. Then he learned to eat the tender 
young sea salmon that his mother caught 
for him,—and the clams and scallops that 
she found and shelled for him. It was a 
pleasant life. He had nothing to do but 
tumble about with the other seal babies, or 
lie watching the gulls that circled back and 
forth with the big, salt-smelling waves, 
singing in their hoarse voices that sounded 
so like rusty hinges, and watching for fish 
they might grab. 

One day, too, the whole sky seemed cov¬ 
ered with a mammoth flock of ducks, (Surf 
Scoters), who were going to Alaska for the 
summer, where they would not find it so 
crowded when their young were hatched. 
For hours the V-shaped flocks swept North- 


THE WATER PUPPY 


91 


ward in a gray-black cloud, while the air 
rang with their musical whistle. Finny- 
Foot stared, his puppy-like eyes round with 
wonder, but at last they all disappeared into 
the blue distance. There must have been 
hundreds and thousands and millions of 
them. How he wished he, too, might travel 
and see the world beyond those rocks! He 
little dreamed how soon his wish was to 
come true, nor in what an amazing fashion. 

His mother kept his oily fur sleek and 
shining, so that he could slide through the 
water easily, and he had no trouble at all 
about learning to swim. Soon he could catch 
a tiny fish in his jaws, if he swam after it 
fast enough, and his fur turned gray in 
leopard-like spots. 

One day, though, these happy, quiet times 
came to a sudden end. At first the only 
thing he noticed was a row of half a dozen 
long black fins cutting through the waves, 
far out at sea. Swiftly the black fins came 
nearer, then an up-toss of their heads 
showed the circling gulls a row of mammoth 
jaws, armed with the most murderous- 


92 


FINNY-FOOT 


looking teeth. It was a band of killer 
whales, and at the sight, every seal on the 
rocks started swimming for shore as fast 
as he could go. 

Finny-Foot’s mother towed him with her 
when his strength gave out, and so great 
was her fright that she never stopped till 
she had him far up on the sandy beach, 
where the whales could not follow. Those 
of their colony who were not swift enough 
got caught, and were devoured by the fish¬ 
shaped monsters who were not fish, and 
whose ugly black sides bore white patches 
that glistened in the sun. Each one had 
a fin on the middle of his back that stuck 
straight up, so that you could see it a long 
way off. It was that that had given them 
warning. 

All afternoon they waited on the beach. 
Then at last the row of black fins headed 
out to sea, and it was deemed safe by 
Grandfather Seal to return to the rocks ana 
fish for supper. And to hear them barking 
under the moon that night, watching the 
white foam blowing down the beach in the 



She never stopped till she had him on the sandy beach 











THE WATER PUPPY 


93 


wind, no one would have known the bloody 
fate that they had so narrowly escaped. 

But the killer whales came back next 
day, and this time took them so nearly by 
surprise that there was not time to swim 
to shore, and those who could not scramble 
to the highest point of the highest rock 
were swallowed whole. How they huddled 
together upon that high rock, while the 
killers swam around and around them 
watching to see if one of them would not 
fall off into the water where they could 
reach them! Finny-Foot’s mother tucked 
him into a crevice and stood over him. No 
use for his father, and the other fathers, 
even to put up a fight against the killers. 
They wouldn’t have had a chance in the 
world. But once more the whales swam 
back to sea, and this time they did not re¬ 
turn; for they, too, were on their way to 
Alaska, where they hoped to catch the fur 
seals as they migrated Southward. 

One day that summer, when Finny-Foot’s 
mother and her neighbors felt quite sure 
there were no killers about, (Grandfather 


94 


FINNY-FOOT 


had been watching the sea all day with his 
big, round eyes), they decided to have a 
picnic, and explore some rocks further out 
in Monterey Harbor, where the painted 
boats of the fishermen pass. 

It proved to be a wonderful fishing- 
ground. Finny-Foot, forgetting his mother’s 
command to stay close by her side, swam 
out to the dories, his round eyes bulging 
with wonder at the way they pulled up their 
netfuls of fish. Then he saw a big salmon 
that he wanted to catch. 

The fish made a sudden dive, and Finny- 
Foot, taking a deep breath, dove after him. 
The next thing he knew, he was all tangled 
up in something. Then he was lifted straight 
into the air, in the midst of a netful of 
wriggling, flapping fish. 

“Father!” cried a black-eyed little boy. 
“See what I’ve caught! Oo!—May I have 
it?” 


II. PIETRO’S* PET 


W HEN Finny-Foot, the seal baby, 
found himself in the fisherman’s net, 
he never once thought how easy it would be 
to catch one of the fish wriggling all about 
him. 

His first thought was surprise that he 
should be rising out of the water against 
his will. Then he was afraid. He had never 
seen a human being so close before. Some¬ 
times he had barked, with the family group 
on seal rocks, as people came to watch them 
from the beach. Then he would swim to 
the other side of the rocks to wait till all 
was safe once more. 

It was a boy of nine whose black eyes 
first spied Finny-Foot as the net was emp¬ 
tied. “Pietro” his father called him. His 
cheeks were flushed with the kiss of the 


♦Note—Pronounce Pya tro. 



96 


FINNY-FOOT 


California sun, and his black curls blew in 
the breeze, as he stood bare-footed in the 
fishing-boat. This boy spoke words that 
Finny-Foot, of course, could not under¬ 
stand. But he read the kindness in his 
tones, and he felt the gentleness with which 
the boy stroked his furry head, and he was 
no longer quite so frightened. 

The boy must have asked his father if 
he might have the seal for a pet, because 
in another moment he was hugging him 
joyously, both arms tight around him, while 
the fish squirmed at their feet, and the man 
and his partner set sail for home. 

But though Finny-Foot was no longer so 
afraid of being killed and eaten, as the 
killer whales would have eaten him, swal¬ 
lowing the little fellow whole, he suddenly 
realized that he was a long way from home 
and mother. Putting his fore flippers on 
Pietro’s shoulder, he began to cry, and you 
would never believe how much it sounded 
like a human baby crying for its mother. 

Pietro stroked his wet, oily, fishy-smell¬ 
ing fur, which was as soft as a kitten’s, and 


i 


PIETRO’S PET 


97 


tried to comfort him, but still the seal baby 
wailed his loneliness. 

His mother heard him, too, and came 
swimming after the boat, her great eyes 
questioning his round, frightened eyes, as 
he peered over Pietro’s shoulder. But when 
he struggled to get free, the boy only held 
him the tighter, and Pietro and the men 
had their eyes on the course ahead, for the 
stiffening wind was carrying them along at 
a great rate. But she followed as far as she 
could, then sadly gave it up and went back 
to tell the colony what had happened. 

By and by it occurred to Pietro that his 
pet might be hungry, and he offered him a 
little fish. Finny-Foot ate it eagerly, and 
the boy laughed at his round, puppy-like 
head, and kitten-like whiskers, and the 
clever fore fins that he had instead of arms. 
He looked like a fish, in one way, too, with 
his hind flippers held back close together 
like a tail. 

When they had landed at Fisherman’s 
Wharf and Pietro had carried the pale, 
spotty-coated little fellow to the shack 


98 


FINNY-FOOT 


where the nets hung drying, young Finny- 
Foot surprised the boy by walking across 
the porch. It was a funny walk, but we will 
have to call it that, because it certainly was 
not swimming. First the seal would raise 
himself on his fore flippers, then draw him¬ 
self forward, with a hump of his back. 
Sometimes he used his hind flippers, and 
sometimes he kicked them together straight 
up in the air. The other fishermen’s chil¬ 
dren greeted this performance with shrieks 
of laughter; and they offered him fish till 
Pietro had to put a stop to it, for fear Fin¬ 
ny-Foot would over-eat. 

He got his mother’s wash-tub and filled 
it with sea water for his strange visitor; 
then, with the help of some of his young 
neighbors, he rolled a great rock up on the 
porch beside it, in the sunshine. There, he 
felt, the little seal might feel at home. Then 
he hooked the screen door on the inside, 
so that no one could get in to tease him. 

Finny-Foot was a tiny fellow. His mother 
had been only five feet long, for she was 
a harbor or leopard seal, not a fur seal. Her 


PIETKO’S PET 


99 


tribe, an old sailorman told Pietro, are 
found everywhere, from the Arctic Ocean 
to South Carolina on the Atlantic side and 
Southern California on the Pacific. All up 
and down the coast, this old sailor had seen 
harbor seals, barking on the rocks and fish¬ 
ing on the sandy bars. He had heard they 
even swam away up some of the big rivers 
and into the Great Lakes. They have been 
seen off the coast of the British Isles, and 
as far away as Japan. 

Finny-Foot soon learned to know the boy 
as his friend, and inside of a week was 
genuinely fond of him. He loved to have 
Pietro stroke his silky fur. He would come 
humping himself along to where the boy 
sat in the sunshine, mending his father’s 
nets, and lay his round, white head against 
his arm, and make a funny puppy-like 
sound that the boy came to understand 
meant: “Please come and play with me!” 

Then Pietro would teach him to fetch and 
carry a stick, or some other simple trick. 
He longed to try throwing the stick in the 
water for Finny-Foot to retrieve, but he 


100 


FINNY-FOOT 


never felt quite sure that his odd pet would 
swim back to him. 

An old seaman used to watch the seal at 
his antics. One day he offered the boy a 
dollar for his pet. He said he wanted to 
take Finny-Foot on board the whaling ves¬ 
sel for a mascot, to bring them luck. But 
the boy would not part with him. 

The next day the old sailor offered him 
five dollars, but still Pietro would not listen. 
His ship was to sail the next day at dawn, 
and the boy heaved a sigh of relief when, 
with a final offer of seven dollars, the old 
man said goodbye. The money would have 
meant needed clothes to the fisherman's 
boy, but he would not part with his pet. 

Then as Pietro was looking at a news¬ 
paper that someone had left on the wharf, 
his eyes caught the picture of a troupe of 
trained seals rolling barrels. They were to 
be in next week's vaudeville show, and 
Pietro resolved to find a way to see it. 


III. THE TRAINED SEALS 


I ’VE got a trained seal,” Pietro told the 
man at the ticket window, as he stood on 
tip-toe to buy his seat. He had earned the 
quarter mending a net for a neighbor on 
Fisherman’s Wharf. 

“What’s that?” demanded a sharp-eyed 
man behind him, who happened to be the 
owner of the show. 

Pietro told him about Finny-Foot. 
“Where do you live?” -the man asked, 
with a peculiar gleam in his eye. But the 
boy was too over-awed by the mirrored 
magnificence of the theatre to wonder at 
the question. 

The whole program, the usual vaude¬ 
ville, entranced him. But when the trained 
seals appeared, his heart thrilled with de¬ 
light. The curtain rose on a row of the 
clumsy fellows seated in a circle on up¬ 
turned barrels, barking in chorus. 

101 


102 


FINNY-FOOT 


First came a barrel-rolling contest, at 
which the audience applauded mightily, as 
it is rare to see trained seals. Pietro as¬ 
sured himself Finny-Foot did as well as the 
best of them. There was a trick seal who 
was always hiding from the showman. 
There was a mother seal in trailing skirts 
and plumed hat, holding her baby in her 
flappers. (The little seal looked too cunning 
in his white bonnet and long dress). There 
were other tricks, and every move the ani¬ 
mals made, with their awkward flappers, 
sent the audience into gales of laughter. 
There was even a seal orchestra, which set 
Pietro wondering how they could hold their 
violins. He could not see that both instru¬ 
ment and bow were tied in place. The 
showman rewarded each performer with a 
fish, just as Pietro did Finny-Foot. The big 
bull seal at the kettle drums would hammer 
away with all his might till he saw the man 
approach, then he would open his jaws for 
his fish and eat it, before again taking part 
in the symphony. 

But the thing everyone enjoyed the most 


THE TRAINED SEALS 


103 


was when a large glass tank was drawn on 
the stage. On an up-standing rock in the 
middle lay three seals, barking just as they 
might have off the shore of Monterey. The 
showman*threw in a fish, and all three dove 
for it. He threw them another, and another, 
then a whole handful of small, silver-shin- 
i ing fingerlings, and the seals dove again and 
again for them, bringing them up in their 
jaws and holding them down with one flap¬ 
per while they ate, if they were too large 
to swallow whole. 

Pietro went home as proud as a peacock 
to think that his seal could do tricks as 
good as those people paid to see. 

That evening, just as he had seated him¬ 
self on the porch in the sunset glow, with 
Finny-Foot scrambling awkwardly for his 
supper, the showman appeared. 

“Now where is that seal?” he asked 
briskly. 

Finny-Foot was put through his paces, 
the boy proud and flattered by the show¬ 
man’s interest. 

“What will you take for him?” the man 


104 


FINNY-FOOT 


asked at last. “I need another seal for my 
pyramid act.” 

“'What’s that?” Pietro’s father called 
through the window. 

‘Til give you five dollars for that seal,” 
said the showman, holding out a green¬ 
back. 

“But I don’t want to sell him,” said Pietro 
promptly. 

“Better take it,” advised his father. “It 
will buy a new coat for school.” 

“Do I have to, Father?” 

“As you please. It is your seal.” 

The showman added a dollar to the five 
in his hand. Pietro looked at the money, 
then at his ragged jacket. Six dollars would 
mean a lot to him. Then he looked down 
at Finny-Foot, whose round, puppy-like 
eyes were fastened on his trustingly. He 
wondered if the showman was kind to his 
seals. Then he remembered the whip he 
had snapped at them when they were slow 
to obey a command. Besides, how could a 
seal be happy so far from the ocean he 
loved? He remembered the old seal who 


THE TRAINED SEALS 105 

lay all day on the side-walk of the Cliff 
House beach. 

“No!” decided the fisherman’s boy. Nor 
did the offer of more money change hi& 
mind. He only hugged his pet to his ragged 
coat and shook his curly head. Nor could 
the showman persuade Pietro’s father to 
interfere. 

After that the boy fell to thinking. Soon 
school would begin, and he must have shoes. 
One bright morning he took Finny-Foot in 
his arms, and made his way to the Ferry 
Building, where he sometimes earned a 
dime carrying someone’s suitcase. He was 
followed by a troupe of small boys and a 
dozen older people, who closed in about him 
in a circle when he set the seal on the 
ground. Borrowing an empty barrel from 
a man he knew at a fruit-stand, he began 
putting the seal through his barrel-rolling 
trick. Then he passed his hat. Nickels, 
dimes and pennies came pouring in,—mostly 
from the grown-up portion of his audience. 
When the next ferry-boat landed, pouring 
a new audience into the facade, he repeated 


106 


FINNY-FOOT 


his show. A third time he put Finny-Foot 
through his paces, and then passed the hat. 

A policeman stopped him. It seemed that 
there were several reasons why he could 
not give another show. But he had already 
earned enough money to buy the new shoes. 

After that Pietro had to leave Finny- 
Foot shut up all day while he went to school, 
and the young seal did not thrive. No lon¬ 
ger would he caper joyously after the fish 
that were thrown him. No longer did his 
fur gleam velvety and his brown eyes shine. 
Pietro realized that a seal does not belong 
on dry land. He needs to live on the rocks 
off-shore, where he can dive for his dinner. 
Finny-Foot might even be homesick for the 
other seals. The boy’s heart ached with 
pity. 

Then he had an idea! When Saturday 
came, he went with his father in the fishing 
dory, and with them went Finny-Foot. 

They were not heading toward where 
Pietro had found his pet, buthe waited till he 
had scanned the water in every direction to 
make sure there were no sharks, then he 


THE TRAINED SEALS 


107 


gave Finny-Foot one last pat on his puppy¬ 
like head, and hugged him, and let him slip 
into the water. 

The young seal, joyous with the feel of 
the salt tide, and never once thinking that 
he was leaving his friend, struck out for 
a point of rock he could just see above the 
wave tops. His muscles were soft from dis¬ 
use,—but just let him reach those rocks, 
and rest awhile, and he would see if he 
could not find his way home! 


IV. FLAPPER THE FUR SEAL' 

r T was “sink or swim” for Finny-Foot,— 
L and it was a long swim to the point of 
rock he had seen. 

He had almost given up, when the tide 
turned and carried him right toward it. Bui, 
where was his mother, and the others he had 
left? Here was no sound of barking seals, 
though over on the yellow ribbon of beach 
sand the wee sandpipers ran up and down 
with the waves, just as they had at Monte¬ 
rey, and the gulls creaked and curveted 
overhead. 

“I want to go home!” wept Finny-Foot, 
in his voice like a human baby’s wail. But 
the only answer he received was the slap 
of the waves against his rock and the creak 
of gulls overhead. 

He caught a fish and ate it before he 

hid himself in a cranny of the rocks to take 

a nap. He awoke to an ocean deep blue 

108 





FLAPPER THE FUR SEAL 109 

under the California sun, and a cloudless 
sky that seemed to bend down to meet it 
everywhere except where the beach met the 
never-ending waves with its yellow sand 
dunes. He caught another fish, and took 
another nap, and when he awoke this time 
he felt much better. 

He was just wondering if he could find 
Seal Rocks if he were to swim along close to 
shore, when he spied the up-standing fins 
of a band of killer whales. They were far 
out at sea, but he remembered what had 
happened to the seal colony when the kil¬ 
lers had pursued them, and for days after¬ 
ward he dared not make the venture. 

Then one morning, when the sea was 
calm, he sighted a big rock shining black 
and wet, further down the coast, and swam 
for it. This rock was even better for bask¬ 
ing in the sunshine and diving for passing 
fish. But it was not home, and Finny-Foot 
was even lonelier now than he had been 
with Pietro. Again and again he started 
swimming further South, where he seemed 
to feel that home ought to be. But always 


110 


FINNY-FOOT 


he saw sharks, and had to hide himself be¬ 
hind the nearest rock. Sometimes, too, 
after a long, tiring swim, he failed to find 
a good fishing ground and had to go hungry 
to sleep. Then he came to another town, 
where he was afraid to go too close to shore, 
and waited long days on a point of rock 
that looked far out to sea. There were 
always plenty of fish, but would he have 
to live all his life alone? 

One day he saw a sleek dark form swim¬ 
ming just off shore. Now Finny-Foot’s own 
family, like all harbor seals the world over, 
were gray spotted when full grown. But 
the newcomer was a rich dark brown and 
ever so much larger. Still, Finny knew he 
was a seal by the way he swam, and himself 
swam out to greet him. 

The visitor proved to be an Alaska fur 
seal, a young fellow who had migrated 
South with the other fur seals, but who had 
been wounded by a shark and had to go 
ashore till his wound was healed. He told 
Finny-Foot of that land of ice and snow 
where his own colony made its home. Finny- 


FLAPPER THE FUR SEAL 111 

Foot decided that it must be the need of 
keeping warm so near the North Pole that 
gave him such wonderful fur, for he would 
need it there to keep him from freezing. 

There were millions of them where Flap¬ 
per the Fur Seal came from. Every spring, 
he said, they started North, after a winter 
along the coast of Canada and as far South 
as Northern* California. Often for days and 
weeks at a time they had to swim through 
a sea that was beaten into giant waves by 
the storm winds. Often rain and snow and 
sleet pommeled the sea all about them, and 
the sky hung low and gray with clouds, and 
they could hardly see for the gray fog that 
hung over everything. Sometimes they had 
to dodge between drifting ice-bergs that 
roared and cracked in the most terrific 
manner. Sometimes a storm would raise 
the waves so high that they were nearly 
drowned. 

But at last, just in time for the short 
Alaskan summer, they would reach the 
small, fog-hidden Pribilof Islands, where the 
mother seals, hundreds of them together, 


112 


FINNY-FOOT 


would raise their babies. The fish are so 
plentiful that the season is one long 
feast. 

The fur seal babies are a woolly black. 
And here the seal youngsters would play 
like puppies, racing and tumbling about to¬ 
gether with their funny, awkward flappers, 
diving and swimming and leaping from the 
water, all in the merriest way imaginable. 

But even there the killer whales pursued 
them. Then, too, there were men who 
killed them for their fur, (Flapper said). 
There were great white polar bears who 
tried to catch them, and Eskimos and In¬ 
dians, who kill them both for food and fur, 
so that a fur seal has to be continually on 
the alert. 

But all this danger and hardship had 
made Flapper unusually well able to take 
care of himself, and he thought that if 
Finny-Foot wanted to come along, they 
ought to be able to keep out of harm’s way 
until they found the little colony off Mon¬ 
terey. He himself, thought Flapper, ought 
now to wait until he saw some band of mig- 


FLAPPER THE FUR SEAL 113 

rants returning to Alaska, and join them 
for the two thousand mile journey home. 

Finny-Foot invited him to join the colony 
at Monterey, but Flapper said the warm 
climate was beginning to make him feel 
itchy in his heavy furs, and if he did not 
find his people within a few days more, he 
was going to swim back North by himself, 
at least as far as Canada. 

One curious thing he told Finny-Foot. 
Instead of each family having just one 
mother, as harbor seals did, there in Alaska 
a family might have a hundred mothers all 
bringing up their children on the same 
rocky islet. But that was because of several 
reasons. First, so many things happened 
to the more adventurous father seals, who 
had to fight off intruders, that often there 
weren’t enough to go around. Then the bull 
seal is so large, (four or five times as large 
as his mates), that he can easily protect 
a whole colony of mothers and babies. 

Finny-Foot thought he would much pre¬ 
fer to have the kind of families his own 
colony believed in. But then, of course, 


114 


FINNY-FOOT 


everything is so different in Alaska, where 
it means a struggle just to keep alive, that 
he supposed it must he necessary. 

One day he and Flapper had been playing 
together, Flapper leaping high above the 
water in great, glistening curves that 
Finny-Foot could not begin to imitate, when 
Flapper gave a bark of amazement. There, 
on a cluster of rocks in a curving harbor, 
above which the gulls creaked and curveted 
as they watched for fish, he could see a 
number of gray objects moving awkwardly 
about or diving into the tide. 

“Look!” he urged Finny-Foot. “I’ll bet 
that’s your colony!” But the little seal could 
not see. “Come on, let’s find out!” Flapper 
urged, almost as glad as if it had been his 
own people that he had found. And sure 
enough, there on the very rock on which 
Finny-Foot had spent his babyhood, a 
snow white pup, he saw his gray spotted 
mother, all alone. 

Just at first she did not recognize him, 
for he had grown so large and had turned 
gray spotted like herself. When she did 


FLAPPER THE FUR SEAL 115 

realize that it was her son, whom she had 
given up for gone, she barked so joyously 
that every member of the colony came 
crowding around them, barking their wel¬ 
come to him. 

(THE END.) 


I 


GLOSSARY 


Aurora Borealis—Northern Lights. 
Bidarka—Eskimo canoe. 

Cache—A hiding-place for food supplies. 
Fiord—A narrow inlet of the sea between 
steep cliffs. 

Glacier—A river of slow-flowing ice. 
“Husky”—Alaskan wolf-dog. 

Ice Berg—A huge chunk of ice that has 
broken off a glacier and floats in the sea. 
Ice Floe—A smaller chunk of ice. 

Ice Pan—The ice where the sea has frozen 
over. 

Igloo—Eskimo house. 

Lava—Molten rock from a volcano. 

Samlet—A young salmon. 

Tundra—Alaskan bog. 

Volcano—A mountain that spouts fire and 
lava. 

Zenith—The region of the North pole. 

116 


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